


Twelve

by babybrotherdean



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 12, Angst, British Men of Letters, Family Feels, Gen, Season/Series 12
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-11-05 19:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11020347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybrotherdean/pseuds/babybrotherdean
Summary: Things go a little bit differently.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this a couple months before s12 started to air, and my original intention was to finish it before the premiere, but that didn't happen, and I kinda lost steam once it was airing. In any case- I guess you could call this my initial s12 predictions taken up a few notches and spewed out in a few tens of thousands of words. More notes at the end.
> 
> (!!! lots of thanks to [Marci](thedropoutandthejunkie.tumblr.com) for betaing this nonsense for me, back when I was. Actively writing it. ;-;)

Between the miracle that he’s just witnessed and the ghost standing before him, Dean thinks that he must be dreaming. Even in a world of monsters and angels and demons, there’s nothing else that could possibly explain this.

He doesn’t know where he is. Could be anywhere across the country; a little clearing in a forest not far from the highway in the middle of the night. He can hear trucks distantly, zooming by on their way to a dozen different destinations, and it’s all. Background. All inconsequential, he thinks, in the grand scheme of what he’s witnessing, because.

Because his mother is standing several feet in front of him. Looks lost and confused in that same nightgown from the fire all those years ago, and her cries for help moments before still echoed on her lips. She’s solid and ethereal and present, and all Dean can hear for a long few seconds are Amara’s last words to him.

_“Dean, you gave me what I needed most. I want to do the same for you.”_

He’s still staring, speechless, phone slipping between his fingertips to bounce gently against the grass at his feet with Sam’s number lingering on the keypad. Not that he’s got signal out here, anyways; must be smack in the middle of nowhere, and he can’t bring himself to be bothered. Nothing really seems to matter at all right then, actually, because his eyes are fixed on his mother and he’s moving, then, starting to walk towards her.

“Mom?” falls from his lips, unbidden, and then softer, like he’s laughing at himself, “I’m dreaming.” This can’t be real; there’s no way that he talked down an ancient deity from consuming the universe, and there’s no way that his mother is standing in front of him now, closer. Close enough to touch, almost, and she still hasn’t said anything. Smells like he remembers, but with a whiff of smoke that turns his stomach and makes him want to gather her up in his arms and protect her.

There’s absolutely nothing stopping him from doing just exactly that, so he does.

And she’s real. She’s solid and soft and warm in his arms. She’s small and fragile and Dean’s- he’s holding her. He can hear her heartbeat, quick and scared, and can feel the way she hugs him back, hesitant at first with fingertips curled into his shirt like he’s going to try to escape, and Dean just. Breathes.

“Mom,” he says again, softer and more sure because she’s here now; she’s where he can physically feel her and it’s a little easier to believe that this is real. She’s just like he remembers, beautiful and soft and good, and he doesn’t know how much time he spends just absorbing that. Pretending, for a moment, that the last thirty-three years of his life haven’t really taken place, and that he’s a little boy all over again, safe in his mother’s arms. But he’s too big for that now, seen too many years and too much horror to truly fit into that space again, another hard truth in a seemingly endless line of the same.

“You… Dean.” Dean snaps out of his thoughts, then, because it’s the first time she’s spoken and she sounds just as lost as she’d looked. It occurs to him, suddenly, that she shouldn’t know who he is; he was four years old the last time they saw each other, to her memory, and he doesn’t get it, for a moment. “How are you- what did you call me?”

Except that they’ve met before this. Met when Mary was just a girl, barely an adult, back when hunting was the life she knew and children were but a distant fantasy. And for a moment, Dean aches, bone-deep, for everything she should have had- the life she deserved, the happiness she’d craved; a life he’d gotten glimpses of throughout his own between djinn dreams and memories reconstructed by angels, but that Mary hasn’t truly been allowed to experience for herself.

She’s so young. Hardly older than Dean was when his dad went missing in the first place.

Slowly, Dean pulls back to look at her properly. The smell of smoke and her initial screams connect the dots for him; this is his mother as she existed in the final seconds of her life; before the demon pinned her to the ceiling and burned her alive. Twenty-nine years old and newly thrust back into the world of the supernatural just in time for it to kill her. Except that now, she’s here- she’s okay; shaken up and in the wrong decade but most decidedly alive. Alive and confused and- and Dean needs to help her. They’ve been together for a handful of seconds but she’s his responsibility, now. His to care for. It’s something he owes to her. The very least.

“I… I called you Mom.” He doesn’t let her go, fingers curled gently around her elbows. Can’t stop staring and she must be uncomfortable, but doesn’t say a word. “What’s the last thing you remember? About- about me.”

She bites her lip, and it hits Dean hard that he’s got the same habit. Used to, until he got a little too old for it. “The… the adult you?” she asks softly. “Or little you?”

Maybe explaining won’t be quite as hard as he’d thought.

“That- that makes things easier.” He’s quiet for a moment, just looking at her. Moonlight makes he look soft at the edges and it- it feels like he can’t stop. Can’t tear his eyes away because he’s tracing out every feature and she comes alive in his memories with every second that passes, like they’re being restored by her presence. Whispers of lullabies and fresh baking and kisses goodnight saturate his mind, and it’s good. Overwhelms him in the best way. “Did you know that was me? When I was, uh-”

“Born?” she offers. “I… I didn’t try to make the connection.” She almost smiles, then, but it’s sort of bitter; seems out of place on her lips. “When I saw you last, my father had just been killed and you just- vanished. Without a trace. Like you’d never existed to begin with. John didn’t seem to remember you at all.”

Of course she doesn’t remember the second time. Not her fault; angels have a way of doing these things regardless of the potential fallout. Mary doesn’t remember how Dean tried to talk her out of having him in the first place, and he swallows hard. Did the conversation even really happen if he’s the only one around to remember it?

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, because there’s nothing else that really seems to fit. “I- I had to catch my ride home.” Hesitates another moment before deciding to just go for it. “I was sent back by an angel, because he wanted to prove a point to me. That I couldn’t change the past. I tried to save you, I tried to stop the demon from getting to you to begin with, but it- I…”

He can’t make himself continue, because he’s never been good at acknowledging his own failures out loud. He looks down and away because Mary’s eyes are too soft and he can’t take the pressure they put on him now to be good the way he was always supposed to be. He was so good when she was still around. “I just wanted to save you.”

The hand on his cheek catches Dean off-guard, but he doesn’t hesitate to lean into it, all the same. Glances back up towards her and she looks sad, thumb stroking in gentle sweeps for a few quiet seconds. “You look a little like your father,” she tells him, and it’s too fragile. Too much for him in that moment so he closes his eyes and pulls her in close again, trying to bundle up every little emotion into the comfort of this embrace. Among all the chaos in the world and everything that’s ever gone wrong in his life, this infinitesimal moment feels untouchable and safe.

Mary is the one who breaks the silence this time, an innocent question mumbled against Dean’s shoulder. It’s almost lost in the fabric of his shirt but when the words reach his ears, everything seems to speed up at get sharp at the edges, the tiny bubble of peace shattered into nothingness around him.

“Where’s Sammy?”

Dean doesn’t know very much in that moment except that they need to go.

Sam thinks he’s dead. Sam thinks he’s just suicide-bombed the Darkness, and- well, so does everyone else involved. Dean knows a lot of things about his little brother, and the very most important one right in those few seconds is that he does all manner of stupid things when he loses Dean.

It’s the sort of behaviour that runs in the family, but- but that doesn’t matter right now.

“We need to find him,” he says, low and scared suddenly because he doesn’t even know where to begin. Figures the road might be a good place to start, though, so he grabs his mom’s hand and starts towards the sound of sparse traffic. “He- we need to find him.”

Mary’s fingers curl tight around his and it’s the sort of comfort for which he has no words. Five minutes back on Earth and she’s already taking care of him, and Dean doesn’t think he deserves that one bit. “We will,” she says simply, and allows him to lead the way.

What Dean doesn’t expect is to step out of their little clearing and onto a dirt road where he can see his baby parked some thirty feet away. He breathes out hard with relief and his mom’s fingers tighten where they’re holding onto him.

“That’s-” She stops short as Dean starts walking again, a little quicker, but continues a moment after. Sounds awed, almost reverent. “It’s John’s car.”

Dean very nearly corrects her, but silences himself before he gets the chance. There’s enough going on right now that he can’t even imagine trying to tackle the subject of his father’s death; not when Mary is already so new and so vulnerable here. It’s a topic that can stand to wait a little longer, so he just swallows down the protest and nods once and takes her all the way to the passenger’s side door. Sees her shiver while he opens it up and pauses just long enough to shrug off his jacket to drape over her shoulders.

“We’ll get you something else to wear,” he says quietly when she looks at him. “We just- we have to go.”

Mary nods, and she climbs into the car, and Dean doesn’t waste any time in closing her door behind her and circling around the front. The keys are in the ignition and he takes a moment to thank Amara or Chuck or whoever is responsible for leaving her here before he starts the engine and cranks up the heat. He doesn’t know how far they are from home, but “too far” is as much of an answer as he needs right now.

“Cas,” he says lowly, pressing down hard on the gas and barely bothering to flick the headlights on. There’s a little way to go until they hit the highway, and he’s got no time to lose. “If you can hear me, you find Sammy and you tell him I’m okay. You got that?”

Silence is his only response. He can feel Mary’s eyes on him, heavy and questioning, but there’s no answer he can provide right now that won’t just confuse her more. She hasn’t asked yet, about the angels, but he remembers her faith in them and doesn’t want to damage that any sooner than he needs to. There’s so much to explain, and he doesn’t even know where to begin. Doesn’t have the slightest inclination of how to go about this, and he’s scared of doing it wrong.

Scared of a lot of things, right now, and he grips the steering wheel a little tighter, leather creaking under his hands. He hasn’t let fear stop him before.

“Dean,” Mary says quietly a moment later, and it’s still startling to hear his name from her lips. Strange the way it’s changed, now, less like she’s talking to her little boy and more like she’s trying to address a stranger. “What year is it?”

Dean takes a deep breath and a sharp turn that brings them, bouncing and skidding, onto the highway. Mary doesn’t say a word about his driving and he wonders if she’s scared of the unfamiliarity. Wonders if she feels the way he did when he was thrown headfirst into a strange future. “It’s 2016. It’s, uh…” He laughs without humour, reaches up to rub at his mouth. He needs to shave. Seems unimportant in the grand scheme of things, though. “It’s been a while, Mom.”

“And, um-” She does sound scared, now. Sounds scared and small like she knows exactly what he’s going to say, and Dean braces himself for the question. Holds his breath. “What do you… do?”

He should have seen this one coming.

“I hunt.” Softly, like it’ll lessen the blow. Dean remembers clear as day the passion with which a younger Mary spoke about raising her children normal and safe. “Me and Sammy, we- we hunt monsters, Mom.”

She doesn’t speak after that. Dean keeps his eyes on the road and thinks about the fact that his entire life has consisted of failing his mother, over and over again; of throwing away the life she tried to give them in favour of, ironically, avenging her death at the hands of the supernatural. He wonders, as he has a thousand times before, about how things might be if his dad had let her go from the start, and decides that it’s too painful an idea to pursue. He has bigger things to worry about now.

It doesn’t take long to determine that they are in, shockingly enough, Lawrence. Or rather, they’re hugging its outskirts- Riverfront Park is familiar in a distant way, like a half-forgotten dream from his childhood- and it isn’t hard to orient himself from there. It’s three hours to Lebanon in the middle of the day, but the I-70 is all but abandoned this late at night. Three hours is three too many and Dean throws caution to the wind, speeding past truckers and lonely travellers on a path lit by moonlight and stars. The radio remains silent and the only sound is the rumble of the engine as he pushes her to her limits, and rubber on asphalt when he switches lanes too quickly.

It occurs to him by the time they hit Topeka that he is in possession of a backup phone. Reaches across Mary to drive, one-handed, into the glove compartment, all mumbled apologies and fumbling hands. She stays quiet throughout and soon he’s keying in the speed-dial, bringing the thing up to his ear just in time to hear Sam’s voicemail message. Kid’s phone isn’t even on and that’s already a bad sign.

He drops the burner and presses down on the gas a little harder. The engine whines but pushes forward all the same, and Dean swallows hard. They don’t have this much time to waste, and every second that passes ramps up his fear that something’s happened to Sam- or maybe that Sam’s managed to happen to himself.

He can’t entirely decide which one sounds worse.

“Where are we going?” It’s still startling to hear her voice; Dean’s more or less tucked it away as a component of dreams and nothing more. He glances over and his mom’s still staring straight ahead, a distant look in her eyes that makes Dean wonder if he should be worried. “We’re still in Kansas.”

“Yeah.” He swallows it down and turns to focus back on the road again. Looking at her is hard. “It’s, uh, it’s near Lebanon. We’ll be there soon.”

Not soon enough, probably, but he tries not to think about that. The car falls silent again and slowly, it begins to rain, a gentle drumming of water against the roof and windshield filling the space in between them where a thousand questions drift, unspoken and unanswered. Dean doesn’t even know where to begin to explain everything he needs to know, but Sam’s safety comes first. Sam’s always come first, even with his recently-revived mother sitting shotgun and the voice of a primeval goddess teasing at the farthest corners of his mind. A million issues to deal with and maybe it’s always just been a little easier to narrow them down to Sam.

Sam is the only one who matters right now, and the three hours it takes them to speed down the I-70 blur into a building rainstorm and a heavy silence. He can barely see out the windshield, its wipers sweeping in a hypnotic pattern trying to keep up with the downpour, by the time they roll up to the entrance to the bunker’s garage.

“I know you’ve got questions,” he says after probably too much of a pause. Mary’s wide-eyed when he looks at her again, and he turns his attention forward quickly after that. “I- I don’t even know where to start, but just trust me for right now, okay? I- we have to find Sam.”

He still remembers how she was when they met, back in 1973, and her devotion to her family. To John. He can only pray that it extends to the grown children who are, effectively, strangers, and breathes out hard when she gives a tiny nod in the corner of his eye. There’s no time to try to convince her of anything else.

Dean’s parking job is haphazard, at best, and he doesn’t waste a moment from there, nearly tripping over himself in his rush to get out of the car. It’s too quiet, his footsteps echoing- and a moment later, a second, barely-perceptible second set, and it occurs to him rather belatedly that his mother is barefoot against the smooth concrete floor- but he doesn’t allow himself to give into the primal fear tying knots in his chest. He presses forward and feels the gun tucked into his jacket and reminds himself that this is his territory, now. He’s safe here, and he’s in control, and he walks a little faster, just in case.

“Sam?” he shouts once he makes it inside the war room, and then, “Cas?” Moves towards the railing and curls his fingers tight around its circumference, leans over with his heart in his throat, praying that his brother will be drowning his sorrows at the table downstairs-

-and then he sees the blood on the floor and the wall and the table and feels like he’s going to throw up.

“Sammy?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story, at the time I'm posting this first chapter, is not complete. I've got just over 30k written, and the entire thing is more or less mapped out... I'm just kind of tired of staring at it on my computer. That's a whole lot of words to never post anywhere. The 15 chapter count is a random estimate, because 1/? always looks weird and indefinite to me.
> 
> I'll try to stick to some kind of (weekly? bi-weekly?) posting schedule for what I have written, and with any luck, getting other people in on it will kick me into continuing to write. I can always hope, right?
> 
> Re: Mary remembering adult!Dean. I guess this is a headcanon more than anything else, but I don't think angels are all that great at erasing memories, considering how often they do it. Sam and Dean stumbled into their own memories in It's A Terrible Life, anyways, and like... I feel like it would be hard for Mary to completely forget something as important as meeting her sons? Granted, Michael, being an archangel, is probably better at this stuff than Zachariah is, but... bear with me.
> 
> (if anybody reading this is following/waiting for Beyond Two Winchesters: yes, I still intend to finish it. No, it still isn't written. I've started the next chapter, but the going is slow because I suck and I've been slightly reworking what's supposed to happen in it, and what'll happen after it ends- I'm trying to pave the way to the epilogue I've got planned, and it's proving more difficult than anticipated.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam wakes up. 
> 
> Dean and Mary talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are beginning to happen, maybe. ?? More Sam will happen later, I promise. This is just. Brief Sam. Mostly Dean and Mary, still.

Sam hasn’t done very much flying in his life, between their road-bound lifestyle and Dean’s deep-rooted fear of planes, but when he wakes up to pressure in his ears and the distant hum of engines working to keep them in the air, there’s not much of a question as to where he is. How he got there is an entirely different matter, and when sensation rushes into his body all at once and has him aching all over with the sort of heavy, throbbing pain in his shoulder that he associates instinctively with a bullet wound, it starts coming back to him in bits and pieces.

“Here I thought you were never going to wake up.” The pitchy, foreign voice brings the memories back a little faster. “I thought you Winchesters were supposed to be tough.”

“Where are we going?” he asks instead of responding to her jab or opening his eyes. He’s still remembering how to breathe, between the pain in his body and the crushing emptiness in his chest knowing that his brother is dead. “Weren’t you supposed to kill me?”

She snorts, and Sam slowly works up the ambition to peel his eyes open. It’s the cabin of some private jet; padded seating, flat-screen televisions, and Toni Bevell, sitting opposite him with a book in hand and a steaming teacup on the surface beside her. He can only stare for a moment, slowly putting together the pieces he lost after being knocked out. “What is it they say? ‘If I wanted to kill you, you would already be dead’?”

Except that she says it more like she’s quoting a Hollywood action flick than putting any of her own meaning behind the words. Sam’s wrists are bound, but the work is sloppy at best; at full strength he’d probably be able to yank himself right out. Even now, he’ll be able to slip free, given enough time and distraction. “You’re the one who said enough was enough. What, did you miss when you shot me?”

He’s taunting her and he knows it. Maybe a part of Sam wishes she’d followed through; with Dean gone, it’s not exactly an unfamiliar feeling to want to join him. He’s been through this a handful of times before, and he finds himself wondering what Toni did with her gun. “Could always try again. Not like I’m gonna move this time.”

“Oh, please.” She rolls her eyes this time and sets her book aside, looking at him like he’s nothing more than gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe. By the sound of things, he might as well be. “You’re much more useful to us alive, even if we only ended up with half of the package deal. How did Dean go, anyways? One drink too many and a loaded gun?”

And Sam doesn’t- Sam doesn’t think. Nearly blacks out for a moment as he lunges, snarling, ropes slicing gouges into his wrists as he yanks at them violently, trying to get to her. Trying to wrap his hands around her skinny little throat and choke the life out of her body, make her pay for even saying his brother’s name with her worthless fucking mouth-

But she’s out of his reach. Her eyes have flown wide and she’s scrambling out of her seat; manages to knock over her tea as she moves out of the way. Sam’s heart is pounding in his ears and he watches with a certain sense of detachment as the liquid starts seeping into the pages of the book she’s abandoned, probably ruining it with its touch. He’s breathing hard and he doesn’t look at her or see the moment it takes for her to gather herself.

“Maybe they should’ve sent animal control for you two,” she mutters. She leaves the tea and the book where they are and promptly leaves, the dull click of her heels against the plane’s carpeted floor the only sound to accent the abrupt silence.

Sam is left alone to slump down in his seat and watch as the book’s ink starts to run with the tea. Its words are blurring into a meaningless mess, and he wonders if maybe that’s easier than trying to hold together as part of a story.

For that one, visceral moment, Sam hadn’t been scared and Dean hadn’t been dead.

He aches with how badly he wants to have that back.

* * *

The blood has dried, tacky and dark under Dean’s fingertips. Each smear tells a story; the activated sigil on the wall, the slurred handprint across the table’s edge. Someone came for Sam, and they came prepared. He can’t help but wonder, bitterly, if the outcome would’ve been different if he’d been here to keep his brother safe.

There’s not enough blood on the floor to suggest a fatal shooting, but it’s enough to have Dean’s chest tight with fear, all the same. Untreated, Sam could bleed out, but the fact that he isn’t here, dying on the floor, suggests that someone wanted him alive.

Injured, but alive. It’s a balm on Dean’s soul, and he’ll take whatever he can get.

In his panic, he’s almost forgotten about his mother altogether, but she’s been trailing behind him, quiet and watchful. Probably analyzing the scene with the same eyes as Dean; eyes of a hunter looking over a crime scene. She speaks before he has the energy to, at his shoulder as he stares as Sam’s bloody handprint, grasping at the table to try to keep himself upright and, evidently, failing. “What’s going on, Dean? Who took him?”

And god, does Dean wish he had the answers. He thinks, with something resembling hysteria, that they’ve got more enemies than he really cares to keep track of anymore, but- but they were supposed to be okay. They fixed the world; he helped Chuck and Amara make up and things are supposed to be easy now. They’re supposed to be safe.

“I don’t know,” he admits quietly, eyes returning to the sigil on the wall. Even among hunters, angels aren’t exactly common knowledge, and it significantly narrows their field of suspects. “But I’m gonna find out.”

He’s going to find out, and he’s going to kill whoever’s responsible. They’ve come too far for something like this to ruin what they’ve fought for, and Dean isn’t about to take this lying down. For now, though, until Castiel can return, it’s a frustrating game of waiting.

At least he isn’t alone.

He turns to Mary slowly, takes in the picture before him. Wrapped up in a too-big flannel shirt, no shoes, looking small and lost in the place that Dean has learned to call his home. Her eyes can’t seem to settle; they drift between the control panels, the high ceilings, the hallways that lead off towards other rooms, even Dean himself, though she seems reluctant to hold eye contact with him for the moment. He doesn’t even really know where to begin with this, so he takes a moment and just. Breathes.

Then he offers her his hand, waits until hers rests in it, tentative, and turns to lead her somewhere a little softer.

“This is the bunker,” Dean says as they walk. He tries to be mindful of the path he takes; carpet is much kinder to bare feet than concrete. “It’s, uh- have you ever heard of the Men of Letters?”

Mary’s fingers go tight around his and it’s enough of an answer that the verbal response is almost redundant. “Yes.”

It’s not what Dean was expecting, but he tries to move on. There will be plenty of time to learn about her childhood and how hunting fit into it. Maybe the two communities were closer back then, or maybe the Campbells just knew more than they ever let on. “Well, you’re not gonna believe this, but- Dad’s dad? He was one of ‘em. From a long line, I guess. Runs in the family or whatever.”

She’s quiet, then. Dean leads her through the kitchen and then they’re stepping into what passes for a living room, soft carpets and couches and a nice television. Nicest place he can really take her without bringing his bedroom into it, and he’s not sure that’s a line he wants to cross quite yet. Mary still hasn’t spoken when he sits her down on the couch and takes the spot next to her, but she looks like she’s deep in thought, brow furrowed. Eventually, she clears her throat, eyes finally lifting to meet Dean’s, and- and he’s reminded, very abruptly, that they share that feature. It’s sort of like looking into a mirror and for a few seconds, he’s stunned into silence.

“Yes,” she says, and he’s almost forgotten what it is she’s responding to. “I knew that.”

Dean’s ready to move on, explain the whole organization and then plunge into how they found the bunker, except- that’s- “What?”

As far as he knows, even John had been unaware of his father’s situation. By the sound of things, Henry had done everything in his power to keep the world of the supernatural a secret from his family, right up until the day Abaddon killed him. John had spent his whole life under the impression that the man had just up and left, without the slightest inclination that something else had happened, but…

Dean doesn’t know what to say, just staring for a long few seconds, lips parted like he’s halfway to blurting out the thousand questions on the tip of his tongue. Mary won’t look at him, now, and she looks almost ashamed of herself. Dean’s left wondering just how much he doesn’t know about his mother, and how much Samuel had kept from he and his brother about what he knew. If the cure to vampirism was just a hint of the knowledge the Campbells had, and they knew about the Men of Letters…

He can’t begin to imagine the kinds of secrets their family must be hiding.

But that’s… that doesn’t matter right now. It can’t; not when Sam’s still out there and when Mary’s still sitting across from him, looking increasingly uncomfortable as the silence stretches on. A clock is ticking somewhere and Dean fumbles over himself to speak, stops just short of apologizing. That conversation can wait for later.

“Uh- well, this is their place,” he manages. “Or it was, ‘til most of them were killed by a demon. A Knight of Hell, actually, named Abaddon, and…” And he trails off, because that’s another long story he doesn’t want to get into right now. Something constricts tight around his heart when he thinks about his mother learning about all the things he did as a demon, or when he’d had the Mark of Cain, hitting his little brother the smallest of offences. “And it’s ours, now, I guess. Home base. Not exactly Lawrence, but… it does the job, y’know?”

“You’re hunters,” Mary says, and when her eyes finally meet his again, she looks horribly, unbearably sad. It’s hard not to turn away. “What happened?”

And Dean opens his mouth to try to explain- to search for a delicate way to tell his mother that her death was what propelled them into this lifestyle to begin with- but then something knocks hard into their coffee table and goes down with an “oof,” and when he glances over, Castiel’s there, panting hard and hauling himself to his feet, hair mussed and eyes wild.

“Sam, where’s- Dean?” And it’s nothing new for their angel to look profoundly confused, but his expression upon seeing Mary would almost be funny in a different context. “You… you’re alive?”

It’s directed at both of them, maybe, but Mary looks too shell-shocked to respond, the pair of them staring at each other silently, so Dean takes charge, purpose restored with a lead to follow. “What happened to Sam?”

Castiel’s eyes return to him, then, and though it’s obvious he has questions he wants answered- probably all centered around the fact that Dean’s alive, the world hasn’t ended, and the late Mary Winchester is sitting alive and well on the couch in front of him- Dean can see the shift in his expression, from scattered confusion to something sharp and directed. He used to be a soldier, after all, and Dean can’t help but be grateful for it in the moment. “Someone was waiting for us when we came here. A woman. She was prepared for my presence.”

“Yeah, I saw.” Dean frowns, reaches up to rub at his face. He doesn’t know a whole lot of female hunters, and most of the ones he does are friends or allies. Doesn’t help a whole lot as far as finding Sam goes. “He’s hurt. Do you know who she was? Who she was with? What she wanted; anything?”

“She had an accent.” Dean’s eyes snap back to Castiel, and he’s frowning, eyes distant. “She sounded English. She banished me almost immediately, though. If she had more to say about what she wanted, then I wasn’t around to hear it.”

English. Bela Talbot comes to mind immediately, but Dean dismisses the thought. Long dead, and even if she’d been in Hell long enough to return as a demon, the work seems too sloppy for someone of her calibre. Bela wouldn’t have left any evidence. “She took Sam.”

Castiel nods, and he breathes out harshly. It’s an almost startlingly human gesture, and Dean blinks as he watches. “I’m sorry, Dean. I told you that I would watch over him in your absence, and I’ve already failed. You put your trust in me, and-”

“Hey, hey, hold on.” Dean cuts him off because he’s heard this speech before and there’s no time for Castiel to be doubting himself now. “Don’t do that. You were caught off-guard. Happens to the best of us, man. Now we just gotta- gotta figure out how to get him back.”

Mary’s been quiet, maybe confused by how a strange man’s abruptly appeared in middle of Dean’s living room, but she speaks up now, voice steady like maybe she’s been preparing for it. “Who are you? How do you know- Sam and Dean?”

She stumbles over their names, and Dean tries not to let it affect him. They’re strangers; they’re a couple grown men claiming to be her children and there are a million other unfamiliar things around her. She’s been torn out of her world and dropped into the future, and he shouldn’t be hurt by the fact that she’s trying to adjust. He shouldn’t.

Castiel doesn’t seem fazed, because he turns towards her and goes a little soft. “My name is Castiel,” he replies, holding eye contact with Mary, and Dean holds his breath. “I am an angel of the Lord.”

 _“Angels are watching over you,”_ she used to tell Dean every night before he went to sleep. He remembers the little ceramic figurine that sat in his bedroom until the day of the fire, and even, distantly, his baptism, or at least the photos that’d hung around the house from that particular event. He’s never thought of his mother as a strictly religious person, but seeing her now, confronted by an honest-to-God angel, he doesn’t know what to expect-

-and she’s quiet. She’s perfectly quiet as she stands up, pulls Dean’s shirt a little tighter around her shoulders, and walks away.

The room is silent for a moment, as the both of them stare after her. Castiel’s the one who breaks it. “Dean, your mother… where did your mother come from?”

Dean doesn’t even know where to begin to answer that question, so he just shakes his head and stands up to follow her.

The bunker is like an enormous maze, even for Dean after living here for the few years he has. There are dozens of rooms he’s never explored and doors he’s never opened; hallways that are entirely unknown. As much as he would love to let his mother have some processing time to herself, there’s something daunting about the idea of letting her wander here alone. He’s not much fond of the idea that she might not be able to find her way back.

“Mom,” he calls after her, and she’s walking quickly but Dean’s been keeping up with Sam for years. He hurries after her and takes a moment to be concerned about the blisters she’s going to get running around on tile, wood, and concrete without anything protecting her feet.

“Don’t call me that. Please.”

It’s a soft request, and she doesn’t stop walking, so Dean swallows hard past the pang of hurt and manages to catch up to her. “Mo- Mary. At least let me get you some socks or something.”

She stops walking abruptly, and Dean stops, too, concerned. She’s a wild card right now, and he doesn’t know how to talk to her; how to deal with this. She’s trembling, slightly, and won’t quite look at him for a long moment until she does, and- and there are tears in her eyes, anger and frustration contrasting the fear that’s buried there, too.

“What am I doing here?” she demands, and for a moment, she sounds every bit the hunter that Dean met in 1973. She sounds angry, and she sounds fierce, but- but she sounds small, too, and profoundly lost. “Don’t tell me you don’t know, because you know more than I do, and that’s enough to be able to explain. How did I get here, and- and why are you hunting, and why is there an angel in the living room, and-” She stops for a moment and takes an unsteady breath, and her voice is softer when she speaks again. Pleading. “And where’s John?”

And Dean. Dean doesn’t have a damn thing to say to that.

How can he even begin to describe everything that’s happened since her death? John’s quest for revenge and how it brought him to his death; everything he and Sam have been through since; the involvement of Heaven and Hell in their lives; Amara’s existence and how she’d resurrected Mary… it’s too much to even think about, let alone to explain.

But Mary deserves it. Mary deserves everything in the world, and though Dean could never hope to hand it to her, the least he can do for her is this.

“I think we should sit down,” he says quietly, looking away. It’s hard to think when she’s looking at him so intently. “It’s kind of a long story.”

There’s nowhere better to start this off than the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In hindsight, as I go over this again, I'm. Mildly impressed by past!me for hitting stuff that actually ended up happening in s12. Huh.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam lands in England and meets his new captors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sam things. Sam is not at all amused by this entire situation. Not even a little bit.

Sam drifts in and out during the rest of the plane ride. He’s physically exhausted; between his brief adrenaline rush and the injuries that have been bandaged, presumably while he’d been unconscious, it’s all too tempting to just fall asleep again and let his body try to heal. But he’s in hostile territory and knows that it isn’t an option; his instincts as a hunter overcome his body’s fatigue and keep him awake, if not alert, for the several hours they’re in the air.

Toni doesn’t come to visit him again. Upon further inspection, the room he’s in, while lavish, is rather small, and he suspects that several other similar compartments exist on the plane. The television is off, and besides Toni’s abandoned and now ruined book, there’s nothing nearby that isn’t bolted to the floor. Though he’s managed to work his way out of the ropes- ironically, the blood from his moment trying to attack her earlier actually made it easier to slip free- he’s remained in his seat. The doors are almost certainly locked, and even if they weren’t, where would he go? He’s not exactly an experienced skydiver, and he’s more likely to get himself killed than orchestrate any kind of successful escape from where he is now. As tempting as that’s beginning to sound, he’ll be much better off waiting until they land. Patience is a virtue of which he’s usually in possession, but today… today things are harder.

Then again, today his brother is dead, so maybe that explains his restlessness. Doing something rash will likely land him right alongside Dean, and that might be the best option he has right now.

So he spends seven hours awake and mostly aware and contemplating the potential circumstances of his own death. He can’t fathom why the Men of Letters want him alive after all the venom Toni spewed his way, and it likely won’t be pleasant. Really, there’s not much reason at all for him to hold onto life; Castiel will find more important things to worry about, and he’s sure that everyone else will be just fine without him.

It’s almost a surprise when they start to descend. He recognizes the change in pressure, though, and there’s a brief knock on his door before Toni lets herself in, giving him a curt smile. “We’ve just about arrived. Welcome to England. Remain in the upright position and all that. Don’t go doing anything stupid while we land, yeah?”

Sam just stares at her. Her expression falters slightly before she turns away, shutting the door behind her, and he’s left alone once again.

They’ll probably be moving him soon. He can still mostly see clouds outside the window, but as they approach landing altitude, he gets a better look at things. Mostly green; they’re not in the city, so he figures they aren’t headed towards Heathrow. There are scattered farmhouses, mostly, but distantly, a bigger cluster of structures, and it’s not until they get closer that he realizes it’s a castle.

Not a particularly large castle, maybe. Sam’s read about plenty of old castles that rest on the English countryside, some in better shape than others. This one in particular looks mostly abandoned; worn down by time and nature. There’s a long strip of asphalt down the side of it, though, and as the plane begins to descend a little more quickly, it’s not hard to guess where they’re headed.

Sam stays seated as he’s been instructed, staring blankly out the window while his ears pop and the landing gear is deployed. A couple minutes later and they’re meeting the ground, bouncing gently and starting to roll to an eventual stop. He grips his chair’s handles tightly and waits, eyes briefly on his own reflection before focusing on the world outside. He must be on the door-side of the plane, because he watches a couple people board from his window before hearing them shuffling around in the next room.

Toni is the first to enter, again. Sam doesn’t look at her, but he hears her speak in a disgusted mutter. “Watch him. Rabid, I swear.”

Four men approach to move him, and briefly, Sam considers fighting. He’s not sure he could overpower them like this, exhausted and injured, but he could give them a hell of a fight. Maybe they’d slip up and use deadly force trying to subdue him, and he wouldn’t have to worry about anything at all anymore. Maybe he’ll be lucky and it’ll end that quickly.

Except when they undo the ropes- unnecessary; Sam could’ve stood up all his own- and yank him to his feet, he stays quiet and complacent while they shove him along, the barrel of a gun jabbing harshly into the base of his spine like a cattle prod.

He just doesn’t have it in him to resist right now. Not like there’s much waiting for him, even if he did manage to escape and make it back to the city from the nowhere he’s been dropped into.

They lead him off the plane and towards the dilapidated castle; it’s nearly in ruins by the look of things but then, if this really is the Men of Letters, then Sam suspects that its appearance may be deceiving. The grass is soft under his boots until they reach the messy gravel that seems to be half-composed of parts of the castle itself; some of its outermost stone walls seem to have been crumbling for some time, now. They’re approaching a tucked-away side entrance, and Sam catches himself scanning for other ways in and out, as if he actually plans to escape. Perhaps his instincts and training intend to take over and make up for his lack of a will to fight.

“Well, here we are,” Toni tells him. The door is the most up-to-date thing about the place; looks like it’s made of some kind of steel alloy, but Sam’s got enough experience to inhale and taste the burn of magic at the back of his tongue. It opens under Toni’s touch and, by the movement of her lips, some quick spellwork, swinging inwards slowly to reveal a dark passageway, stone-lined with no visible end. Sam stays quiet and allows himself to be led forward, taking the opportunity to look around.

At first glance, the corridor seems as old as the rest of the castle had from the outside, but upon closer inspection, the stone isn’t worn like it should be. Though the door slides shut behind them, plunging them into darkness, it lights up moments later with industrial bulbs lining the ceiling, one that’s higher than it should be for a structure like this. It’s been carefully constructed to match the rest of the building, but it’s significantly more modern than the crumbling ruin he’d seen outside.

“Now, Sam, this will be much easier if you cooperate.” Toni’s still speaking to him, but Sam doesn’t acknowledge her. He’s much more interested in where they are right now, a convenient distraction to the inevitability of his own demise. “I’m sure you know how the Letters are. Stubborn old bastards. They chose to keep you alive because they want something, and if you’re smart, you’ll see that for the opportunity it is. Don’t squander their mercy for some half-baked escape attempt.”

Sam doesn’t look at her when he responds, voice low and soft. Maybe a little mocking, but he can’t help himself, eyes on the stone floor at his feet and nothing left to lose. “If I wanted to escape, then I’d already be gone.”

She doesn’t have a response to that, and Sam actually smiles when he gets a glimpse of the way she’s pressed her lips together in a thin line of irritation. If he isn’t going to fight his way free, then at least he won’t lay down and accept his fate. Not quite yet.

After what feels like an eternity of following the tunnel, with no other hallways branching off and no doors in sight, they finally reach its end in the form of another steel door. Just like the first, Toni steps forward to open it, and Sam finds himself squinting as it opens, revealing a room much brighter than where they’ve been walking for the past several minutes. He isn’t given any time to adjust, though, as the other men continue to urge him forward until he’s stepping right into the light, blinking quickly to try to regain the gift of sight.

When his vision clears, he doesn’t really know what to think. It’s like he’s stepped into a clean office space; a shiny, sand-coloured marble floor, pale wood accents, even a big desk at the back of the room, with a young bespectacled woman sitting in a leather chair behind it, scribbling away in a notebook. A computer sits in front of her, but she seems to be ignoring it in favour of whatever work she’s doing right up until Toni leads their little party to her workstation.

“Antonia,” the woman says curtly, and Sam watches as Toni visibly bristles. Interesting. “Was the mission successful?”

Sam can hear Toni’s little huff, and he bites hard on the inside of his cheek. The hostility between them is palpable, and it has him wondering exactly what kind of operation is running here, or where Toni fits into it. “You have eyes. Sam Winchester, in the flesh.”

“You were sent to retrieve both Winchesters.” The other woman tilts her head, and Sam briefly meets her eyes. Cool and calculating. He doesn’t let himself look away, staring her down until she loses interest. “You’ve only got one.”

“He says his brother is dead,” Toni replies, and it’s impossible to miss the note of irritation, even with the hard pang in Sam’s chest that comes with the reminder. “What does it matter, Maria? I’ve completed my task.”

“He said that, and you believed him?” The women- Maria- laughs, and Sam almost brings himself to be offended. “You read their case files. You think he’d just hand Dean over because you asked him nicely?”

The more they talk, the more Sam has to wonder just how much they think they know about him and his brother. Of course, it wouldn’t be hard to follow their more world-ending adventures through the news and the supernatural grapevine, but just how in the loop are they? He stays quiet and listens because piqued curiosity is better than suicidal ideation right now, and he’ll take whatever he can get.

“The angel was there, but Dean wasn’t.” Toni sounds like she’s losing her temper, and Sam can hear the other men around him shifting in discomfort. He figures they didn’t sign up to be a third party to this kind of dispute. “He’s dead, end of story. I got the one I could, and you sat here and waited for me to come report it to you. I think it’s clear who’s done more work between the two of us.”

A long, tense silence, but then Maria turns to her keyboard and starts to type something, eyes settling on her monitor. “They’re waiting for you,” she says instead of acknowledging Toni’s comment. “You’re already late, so best hurry up.”

Toni seems like she wants to say something else, for a moment, but then she just straightens up and starts walking again, making a quick gesture that prompts the men surrounding Sam to follow. Sam moves on his own, not terribly intent on deepening the bruise that’s surely formed low on his spine, walking quickly because he might as well get this over with now. There’s no telling what the Men of Letters want from him, especially after being so clear in their distaste for everything he’s done in his life, so it’s just a matter of waiting and watching until he’s told.

The hallway that follows through a hardwood doorway is immaculate; more modern than the one they’d taken to get inside and with several other doors that line its walls. Sam gets glimpses of a few rooms as they pass by; immaculately-kept living quarters, storage spaces filled to the brim with mundane-looking objects, piles upon piles of books. The architecture seems more and more mismatched the farther inside they travel, with the clean, professional corridor accented by older rooms, wood-panelled walls, and even hints of the stone he’d seen from outside. It’s a hodgepodge of four different centuries mashed together into something that seems oddly functional, with the occasional sighting of other people hard at work, bent over books or papers or even computers, on occasion. Sam doesn’t know what to make of it, really, and he’s so caught up in his own musings as he compares this stronghold to the one back in Lebanon that he doesn’t register the room they’re entering until Toni announces their presence.

“Father. The Winchester boy, as promised.”

Sam doesn’t know what he was expecting, exactly- maybe something resembling a throne room, if he’d let his imagination run wild enough- but it certainly hadn’t been this. A functional conference room, by the look of things, with a long wooden table and a dozen padded leather chairs, each seating a man probably twenty or thirty years older than Sam. Even between Toni, Maria, and the few women he’d seen on his way in, he isn’t all that surprised to see the seats of power being held exclusively by men. The room matches the one back home; though slightly more advanced technologically with a projector setup, it has the same dark wood and bookshelves that Sam’s grown used to over the past couple of years.

A dozen pairs of eyes are on him, and he breathes in deep before looking up, meeting the gaze of the man sitting at the head of the table. More salt than pepper; he’s dressed like the rest of them in a dress shirt and suit jacket like he’s prepared for a day at the office, and maybe that’s what this is to them. Just another day at work; playing God and taking the Winchesters off the field. Sam’s being scrutinized but he doesn’t flinch, keeps an even expression and doesn’t back down when the man’s eyes narrow.

“Antonia,” he says, and there’s that name, again, and Sam watches her stand up a little straighter. Wonders what the story is behind the whole thing. “You were sent for two.”

Sam wonders how many times they’re going to have this conversation before the day’s over, and decides he’s too tired to listen to it all again.

“Dean’s dead,” he says flatly, and doesn’t flinch when the attention returns to him. He holds his chin high and watches the men at the table glace at one another, some of them speaking in low tones. “He died saving the world. Again. But you guys know all about that, don’t you?”

He’s received with silence, for a moment, before the man he’s watching- the leader, if he knows anything about body language and how seating arrangements like this work- stands up, as well. Must be a dozen feet away but Sam already knows he’s bigger, taller. It’s a sorry attempt at intimidation and control.

“You will speak when you are spoken to,” he’s told, and Sam doesn’t- Sam doesn’t even know how he’s supposed to take an order like that seriously. “You should learn to have some respect.”

“Coming from an organization who’d rather hide in the basement with their books than go out into the world and help people?” Sam snorts. He’s beyond the point of being worried for his own safety, and with every second that ticks by, the existence of this chapter of the Letters infuriates him more. No point holding back now, right? “I’m not the one who needs to learn some respect.”

There’s the gun, again, jabbing him right in that tender spot, and he grits his teeth together, holding his ground. “Watch your mouth,” one of his guards snaps at him, but he doesn’t back down, holding the gaze of the man at the head of the table. There’s no turning back now, and like hell he’s going to apologize to someone like this.

There’s another moment of dead silence, and then the man just snorts softly. It’s almost a laugh. “I didn’t think you would come easy, Sam,” he says, and the touch of amusement in his voice has Sam bristling. “I’ve been rude. Allow me to introduce myself; my name is Gerald Phillips, and welcome to the London chapter of the Men of Letters.” He smiles, then, like he’s invited Sam over as a friend and not captured him like an animal. “We’ve been watching you for a long time, now. You and your brother. Not that he’s important to this conversation, now, I suppose- oh, don’t give me that look. He’s no good to anyone dead, and that includes us.”

“Yeah, I already heard the speech,” Sam interrupts. He isn’t up for another game of pin the blame on the Winchester. “So why am I alive if I’m such a big threat, huh? What’s the point?”

Gerald tsks at him, turning away and moving around the table. “As I said, we’ve been watching you, and we’re very interested in what the two of you have managed to accomplish. Though your means are often… messy, you seem to have access to magic that we’ve yet to harness, or else contacts who can do it for you. Your involvement with angels, especially, is of interest to our purposes here. I’m sure Antonia has told you about the research we do.”

“Not really.” Sam slants a glance towards Toni, but she isn’t looking at him. Her eyes are fixed on some arbitrary point on the floor in front of her. Seen and not heard, it would seem. “Remind me why I care?”

“Because we have a place for you here, Sam.” Gerald turns to face him again, and Sam’s reminded, oddly, of Dick Roman. They’ve got the same sort of business-focused air to them, all about politics and efficiency. It’s a little unnerving, but he tries not to let it get to him. “You have knowledge that could prove incredibly valuable to our cause. You have resources to which we have no access, and surely, the Winchester name alone is bound to earn us some favours. You could be a great asset in our quest for knowledge moving forward, assuming, of course, that you leave your… barbaric lifestyle behind.”

And Sam’s.

Sam’s fucking floored.

He wonders, vaguely, whether or not these people interact with those outside their twisted little community. He wonders if they know anything about how humans work, or what it means to do something meaningful in the world- more meaningful than gathering up information and hiding it away from those who may be able to do something with it. He hasn’t learned much about the relationship hunters had with the Men of Letters as of yet, except through what Henry had told them, but this brief conversation has told him all that he needs to know.

The Men of Letters don’t help people. They don’t save lives, or fight monsters when they threaten innocent civilians. They don’t offer the support of information or knowledge that could be vital to a hunter’s work, and they certainly don’t stop world-ending disasters the way he and his brother have done for years.

“I understand that you might need some time to think about this,” Gerald says during Sam’s stunned silence. “It may take time to… move past the way you’ve learned to do things. But believe me, son, it’s much more rewarding to observe than to meddle with the natural order of things. What is it that you and Dean call yourselves? Legacies? Why not follow that path, and do something useful with yourself, instead of throwing your meaningless life away in some fruitless path of destruction and bloodlust?”

Something useful. Something. _Useful._

Sam’s got a bullet wound in his shoulder, his brother is dead, and the world is in one piece because of everything they’ve sacrificed. Time and time again, they’ve laid down their lives- more than- to protect billions of innocents who will never know their faces or names, or that they were ever in danger to begin with. Sam has been saving lives and protecting people with his brother since he was a child, barely able to comprehend the scale of what they were doing. Sam has tangled with angels and demons and _gods_ ; he has been to Heaven and Hell and Purgatory; he has fought the devil and _won,_ and.

And this man. This tiny speck of a man who spends his life holed up and hiding from the real world thinks that he is worth more than that. Dares to believe that his "cause," his mission to gather up all the information in the world and keep it for himself, is more important than all that Sam and his brother have done for humanity.

And Sam. Laughs.

Sam throws his head back and he laughs, something with a touch too much of hysteria and that comes from deep in his chest; clears out his lungs and his head and his soul, he thinks, because this is.

He’s better than this.

He’s so much better than these people, and he realizes it in one short, startling second. He and his brother are so much better than this group of secluded, selfish people, and they’ve got no right to be demanding anything. They’ve got no right to make the decisions they’re making, and the knowledge is a kind of comfort.

It feels good to laugh like this, even when Gerald’s face goes red with anger and he snaps at the guards to bring Sam to a holding cell. Even when he’s grabbed roughly and chokes a little with the pain of his shoulder being jostled and all but dragged out of the room, every eye on him as Toni and the men at the table watch him leave.

Even as the neat, kept hallways turn back into stone floors and crudely-lit corridors, and he’s thrown into a locked room with a tiny bed and a tiny desk and not a whole lot else to keep him busy. Even when he hears the key turn and the guards taunt him, and even when he collapses on the floor with exhaustion.

Sam just laughs and laughs and laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :>


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean resolves to protect Mary, whatever it takes.
> 
> Toni pays Sam a visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some soft things, mostly.

Mary doesn’t say much after Dean finishes giving her the truncated version of his life story. They’re in the living room again, and Castiel has, thankfully, made himself scarce. Even he had been able to detect how uncomfortable his presence was making Mary, and had mentioned something about investigating the crime scene before leaving them alone. Dean doesn’t know how much time has passed, only that he’s getting tired and his body wants him to rest. By the look of things, Mary is in a similar situation.

“That’s pretty much it,” he tells her after explaining his talk with Chuck and Amara. It’s hard to look at her while he speaks; even though he’s lived it himself, the whole thing sounds too fantastical to be real. It seems silly to lay it out for her like this; sounds more like a fairy tale than anything that could possibly have happened. Even to another hunter’s ears, it’s too much. “I… I mean, that’s the gist of it. You could always read Chuck’s books if you want all the gory details.”

He tries to laugh but it comes out breathless and hollow. This is too much for him, too; between Sam being taken and his mother being returned, Dean doesn’t know what to do with himself. He doesn’t know where to even begin to deal with this, and he’s emotionally drained after spilling out the last thirty-something years of his life, blow-by-blow. More than anything, he wants to curl up and sleep for a week or four, but he knows he can’t do that now. Not until his brother is safe at home the way he’s supposed to be.

“John’s dead.” It’s the first thing that Mary’s said in an hour or two, Dean thinks, and he glances up at her. She isn’t looking at him, eyes fixed on the floor and tear tracks dried on her face. He wonders, if it was hard for him to tell, about how hard it was for her to hear everything he’s just detailed. What little he knows about his mother is that she’d wanted, more than anything, to leave hunting behind and keep her family safe. The story of Dean’s life is her biggest fear come true, and he almost feels bad for telling the truth. He wishes there was anything else he could say, and the fact that she’s clinging to a relatively small factor- her husband’s death, a decade ago- is more than a little concerning.

But Dean just clears his throat and makes himself nod gently. He just needs to brace himself and deal with whatever fallout is on its way, now. It’s the best he can do while Sam’s whereabouts are still unknown. “Yeah,” he agrees, quiet. “He- he sold his soul, to save me.”

Guilt sits heavy in chest, a pain he hasn’t really felt in years. The grief on his mother’s face brings it all rushing back, though, full-force like a wall of water crashing down over his head. His father died to save him when he shouldn’t have even been alive to begin with, and he does his best not to think about the way that particular tradition seems to run in the family. The Winchester curse, maybe.

Mary doesn’t respond, curling her fingers tight in her too-long sleeves. She’s still wearing Dean’s shirt, the nightgown sitting worn and soft underneath, and Dean thinks belatedly that he should find her something else to wear. There’s something uncomfortable about seeing her exclusively in the outfit she wore the night she died.

“Is there somewhere I can sleep?” she asks after a long moment of silence. Dean looks away because he can’t take it anymore, just nodding tightly and standing. He waits until she’s following him and moves towards the hallway.

There are dozens of unoccupied bedrooms in the bunker, most of them contained in the little cluster surrounding the ones Sam and Dean have picked for themselves. Dean leads the way towards them, mentally taking stock of his options- they’re all livable, really, if sparse, but he wants to set a higher bar than that for someone who’s so vitally important. It eliminates too many options, and when he slows down, it’s room 21 that he finds himself lingering outside.

It’s not like Sam is here to use his bedroom right now, and it’s as close to familiarity as Mary is going to get. For how little his brother has made it his own, there are family photos and warm blankets, and maybe it’ll be okay until Mary gets a little more comfortable.

Dean clears his throat softly and reaches out to open the door, letting her step inside. “Is this okay?” he asks quietly, watching as she wraps her arms around herself. “I can get you fresh sheets, if you want.”

Slowly, she shakes her head, and Dean stays quiet as she moves towards the bedside table, fingertips brushing the frame of an ancient photo of her and John. Young. Happy. “Thank you,” she tells him, and doesn’t turn as Dean steps out and moves to close the door, but- “Dean?”

But maybe she needs to know where the bathroom is or something, right? “Yeah?”

And it takes her a moment to speak, just softly as she stares at the photo. She looks small in his shirt; small and young and vulnerable. Dean’s not entirely surprised by the overwhelming need he feels to protect her. “You and Sammy… you saved the world, right?”

Dean hadn’t used those words, and he’d tripped and fumbled too many times talking about the apocalypse. They’re not exactly fond memories. “Guess so.”

Another moment of quiet, and he watches her exhale, shoulders curling in like she’s cold, and he needs to physically restrain himself from going to her. He wants to make it better. “John would be proud of you two.”

There’s something thick in Dean’s throat and he struggles to swallow around it, looking away sharply with the burn of tears. He doesn’t say a word as he closes the door, listens to the way it clicks into place before turning around and walking away, down the hall and back towards the war room where Castiel must be waiting.

He’d have been too restless to sleep, anyway. There’s work to be done now, and he knows himself well enough to understand that it’s the only way he’ll get any sort of rest at all.

“Tell me about her,” Dean says as soon as he walks into the room. Castiel’s at the table, brow furrowed and eyes lingering on the blood that’s long-since dried to the floor. “Tell me everything so we can find this bitch and save Sam.”

“There wasn’t much for me to see,” Castiel says reluctantly. “She banished me immediately, Dean. I hardly even heard her voice.”

It’s not the answer that Dean wants to hear and they both know it. Castiel looks away and Dean’s left clenching his jaw, taking a deep breath. Having no leads to follow isn’t going to help Sam, and Dean needs a direction to start working towards before he starts summoning demons. It’s a small comfort that the resources are there if he decides that he’ll need them. “Anything at all.”

“Her accent was the most memorable thing about her.” Castiel’s still staring at the blood, but his hands are on the table and he’s fiddling with something. Shell casing, he realizes after a belated moment, and figures it might be something to pursue. “And the fact that she was prepared for me. She knew I would be with him.”

That’s perhaps the most troubling part of this. Dean only knows the sigil after an angel taught it to him personally, so he can’t imagine there are very many other humans who have it on hand. Who would know them well enough to recognize their friendship with Castiel and prepare to take him off the playing field right away? Dean knows they’re not terribly popular, as far as the hunting community goes, but they mostly keep to themselves these days. Knowing the location of the bunker factors into this, too; it’s not exactly listed in the phone book.

“Whoever it was,” he says after a moment, “they knew what they were getting into. They knew what to expect from us, and…” His eyes drift towards Sam’s handprint, a few feet away from him, and feels a pang in his heart with the image it carries of his brother’s struggle. “And they did a damn good job of it.”

“We’ll find him.” If nothing else, the steady, sure tone of Castiel’s voice is a little soothing. He’s good at not doubting things like this. “But Dean… how are you alive? What happened with Amara?”

“I, uh…” Dean trails off, rubs at his chest where, hours earlier, hundreds of thousands of souls had been resting inside him. It feels sort of hollow now, but it’s been fading with time. “I fixed it. They made up. Amara brought my mom back. Hooray, right?”

Castiel looks a little skeptical, to say the least, but he doesn’t press further. Dean suspects he’s going to want more answers later, but maybe he understands that they’ve got a more important goal right now. “Where do we start our search?”

“With figuring out who we pissed off this time around.” It’s usually the cause of situations like this; not that they’re at any shortage of people they’ve upset. “And then we narrow it down by figuring out who knows that angels exist, and who knows how to find this place.”

“That doesn’t leave many options.” Dean can see Castiel’s mind working, brow furrowed in concentration. Without pause, he turns away, headed in the direction of the library, and Dean follows him. He’s probably letting himself be too hopeful, but their resident angel works like a supercomputer when the situation calls for it. “It eliminates most of Earth’s population.”

“Helpful.” It’s better than nothing, but Dean already knew that on his own. He follows Castiel into the library and watches as he flits around to different shelves, gathering up a pile of books. Angels, mostly, by the look of things, and slowly, Dean starts to help. He moves, instead, towards the Men of Letters history section, the one where they spend all their time lauding their own accomplishments, because hey, maybe they’ll mention a friend who also happens to hold a grudge against the Winchesters. “Guess we’d better buckle down, then.”

Castiel doesn’t respond, so Dean just sits himself down with a pile of dusty texts and gets to work. He’s restless and anxious and his eyes jump all over the page, but he forces himself to work through it. It feels like a waste of time, reading while Sam is God-knows-where with God-knows-who, but the logical part of his brain- however quiet it might be at moments like this- knows it’s his only real option.

If nothing else, Castiel sitting opposite him, hard at work as he skims the books with a furrowed brow and pursed lips, offers the comfort of company. It’s better than doing this all alone.

* * *

Sam’s room is roughly twelve feet by twelve feet, with a higher-than-average ceiling and no windows. He suspects the latter is due to their location; though the descent into the castle’s hidden underground infrastructure had been nearly imperceptible on the way in, it’s obvious now that they’re at least partially underground. The ceiling’s height makes up for the closed-in feeling, though, and all things considered, the room is surprisingly comfortable. The bed is large enough for his long frame, and he’s been provided with pen and paper at the desk to do with, he supposes, whatever he wants. An unobtrusive door on the wall adjacent to the one he’d been shoved through to begin with leads to a simple bathroom, white porcelain with white tile, outfitted with a sink, toilet, and shower. The room as a whole is not unlike those he’d spent his childhood growing up in, though admittedly, this one is significantly cleaner.

For hours- though he hasn’t been provided with a clock, they haven’t taken his watch from him yet- he’s just been pacing. Exploring every nook and cranny of his little cell and searching for a way out. The door is locked and the vent under his desk is tiny, and it doesn’t take long to come to the conclusion that he’s trapped here until someone comes to visit. Even if he were to slip away, he still isn’t sure what he’d be able to do with it; he doesn’t know where he is, relative to any major airport, and doesn’t have any money even if he found his way to civilization. If this fortress is anything like the one back in Lebanon, it’s warded to Hell and back, too, so any hope of being found by Castiel is probably useless. He’s a sitting duck in a strange place, and for a complete lack of anything else to do, he sits himself down at the desk and he picks up the pen and he stares, for a long time, at the blank page in front of him.

He hasn’t penned a letter like this in a very long time.

_Dean._

_I screwed up. Bet you’d be laughing at me right now, letting some chick get the jump on me, huh? Guess I just didn’t expect anyone to be waiting at home. Not that it really feels that way anymore, if it ever did._

_I guess that’s what you wanted, though. For it to be our home, right? Never thought our home would have a dungeon or a door to Oz, but you kind of made it feel like that, anyways. You were good at making places feel like home._

_I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what to do. They want me to help them, but… even if they were doing something good, what’s the point anymore? It doesn’t feel worth it when you’re not here to see. S’like when I used to make you watch every time I did something, remember? Standing on one foot and stupid shit like that._

_You always watched. You were good at that, too._

_I don’t know what to do. I’m scared, Dean._

_I miss you._

_-Sam_

Except that. That doesn’t really feel quite right.

Sam stares at his own name for a long few seconds before slowly scratching a line through it. He replaces it with three words that have always made him feel safe; a blanket wrapped around his shoulders on a cold night. A hand holding his while he crosses a busy road.

_-your little brother_

He doesn’t feel quite so alone anymore when he sets down his pen.

Sam stares at the paper for a long time, tracing the curves and dips of his handwriting until a quick rapping at the door catches his attention. He fumbles to fold up the letter and stuff it into his pocket before the door opens, and he rises to meet his guest, more than a little wary when he spots Toni on the other side. She keeps her distance, looking at him distastefully. Maybe she got her fill between the plane ride here and their eventful meeting earlier.

“Well, you’ve done it,” she tells him, crossing her arms, shoulders pulled back tight like she grew up balancing books on her head. “They don’t know what to do with you, now. Seem to think you’re completely unhinged, though why they’re surprised, I can’t fathom. You’re all the same, aren’t you? Hunters? Barbaric, really.”

Sam just watches her, silent. He doesn’t know what she’s expecting; does she want him to lash out at her again? Is she taunting him just for the hell of it? He can’t get a good read on Toni, but he’s got the sense that her bark is an awful lot worse than her bite when she isn’t armed and dangerous.

She looks a little irritated with his lack of response, huffing softly and letting her arms fall to her sides again. “Well, you’ll be glad to know that everyone here was expecting the both of you. Package deal, and all. The council isn’t very pleased with the fact that Dean’s dead.”

“So sorry for the inconvenience.” Sam does react, that time, if only for the feeling of a knife slipping between his ribs with the mention of his brother’s name. “Do you want something, or do you just spend your free time bothering your prisoners?”

She rolls her eyes, but she also rocks her weight backwards like she’s thinking about stepping away. Good. “You’re not a prisoner, Sam. You’re a guest, blah-blah-blah. You should be grateful, really. Not everyone gets the full suite.”

Sam snorts and gives the door a pointed look. “Never been a guest anywhere that kept their doors locked from the outside.”

A long few seconds of silence, and Toni scowls like she’s just eaten something sour. “I’m sure someone will be along to make sure you’re still alive soon. Enjoy being a heathen.” She doesn’t say anything else, turning away and shutting the door behind her. Sam hears the click of the lock and just rolls his eyes as he sits back down in the chair, sighing hard.

It would seem that all he has to do now is wait. It’s far from the first time.

* * *

Dean loses track of time after he cracks open the fourth volume of _The Men of Letters: A Proud History_. He hasn’t learned much besides how far back the Winchester name goes; not that it’s relevant to their research right now, but he thinks with a pang that Sam would go nuts for information like this. He makes a note to himself to set the texts aside for his brother to explore later, but already, it’s getting jumbled up in his head as he tries to keep his eyes open. He hasn’t slept since leaving the bunker to face Amara, and it’s starting to catch up with him.

Castiel notices, too. “Dean, you need to rest,” he says gently. He’s elbow-deep in the lore they have on angels; not so much for the information itself as for its sources and information about who could have access to it. “I’ll keep looking. You won’t be able to help Sam if you can’t even take care of yourself.”

Dean’s got half a mind to protest, but a yawn bubbles up from his throat, instead, and he’s forgotten all about what he wanted to say by the time it’s passed. He hates to admit it, but Castiel is right; he can’t focus like this, and he’s more likely to overlook important information than he is to actually absorb it into his brain. He’s a liability right now rather than an asset.

“Four hours,” he says reluctantly. He stands up from the table slowly, one hand tight on its edge because he’s pretty sure it’s the only way he’s going to get himself upright. “Maximum.”

Castiel nods, and Dean thinks maybe he’s just being humoured but doesn’t quite have the ambition to fight it. Instead, he just turns away, starting towards the hallway that’ll take him to the living quarters and reaching up to rub at his eyes, exhaustion weighing down his every step. It’s been a long day.

He reaches his hallway soon enough, dragging his feet on his way to his bedroom, but. Hesitates. Catches sight of Sam’s door in the corner of his eye and frowns as he turns to look at it properly, trying to remember whether he’d left it ajar after settling his mother in earlier. The chill down his spine tells him no, so he steps closer, trying not to panic as he nudges it open a little wider.

“Mary?”

The lights are off, but even in the dark, he can see that the bed is empty. The comforter is gone, and so is Mary; Dean spots her nightgown crumpled up in the corner of the room and feels his heart in his throat.

There’s no telling how long she’s been gone, or where she could’ve wandered off to by now. If she’s gotten lost in the bunker’s depths, or if she’s left; maybe everything here has been too much for her and she’s simply taken off on her own. It’s a terrifying thought, and Dean doesn’t give himself time to think before he’s turning, stumbling over himself in his rush towards the war room.

“Mom?” he calls as he goes, reverting back to the softer title in his panic. There’s no sign of her through the living room, or the kitchen, and by the time he reaches the war room he’s out of breath and getting more scared by the moment. He fumbles, tries to come up with a plan, and. And if she’s inside, she’s okay, but it’s the outside he needs to worry about, and then he’s turning towards the garage and setting off at a run once more.

Could she have left? The exits are warded, but mostly against the supernatural- a human could easily leave, provided they found their way to one of the doors. Dean tries to figure out how long she’s been alone and thinks about the area immediately surrounding the bunker; could she have made it to Lebanon on foot by now? Could she have taken one of their cars?

None of them seem to be gone when he makes it there, and that’s a tiny hint of relief amidst his frenzied concern. He makes a beeline for the Impala, thankful that he’s still got her keys handy, and moves straight for the driver’s door, plotting out a route that would take him down the most likely footpaths-

And then he reaches her door and. Stops.

Breathes.

Mary is curled up in the Impala’s back seat, Sam’s comforter wrapped around her like a cocoon and Dean’s shirt sleeves pulled down over her hands where they peek out. She’s sound asleep, lips gently parted, expression soft and serene the way she exists in his best memories.

“Dean?” Castiel’s come in behind him, probably summoned by his panicked searching. Dean’s doesn’t respond; stays right where he is and just watches, trying to put a name to the warm, tight feeling in his chest. The angel comes to his side and stays quiet for a moment, the both of them just existing in the same moment. “Is everything alright?”

“She’s sleeping.” Dean’s voice is soft, because if he knows anything about growing up a hunter, it’s that waking up to slight disturbances runs blood-deep. “She’s… she’s sleepin’, Cas. She came out here to sleep.”

His voice breaks somewhere in the middle, and he can’t believe that this is getting him so worked up, but- but there’s something that cracks inside him seeing his mom so soft and vulnerable and small. She’s a million things in his memories; his guardian and his caretaker and everything good and pure he’d had as a child. Here, though- here, in this moment, she becomes someone else, too. Someone he needs to protect.

Dean takes a shuddering breath and turns away. He doesn’t look at Castiel, but when he starts to walk, a second set of footsteps follows.

“I’m gonna go lay down,” he says quietly. Castiel nods, and a moment later, he’s alone, left to return to his room and close his door and change into something to sleep in. He crawls into bed and thinks about Sammy and their mom and everything that he needs to keep good and safe.

He needs to keep them safe. He doesn’t know another way to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :>


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam gets a friendly visitor, and Dean makes some progress with his mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like this chapter. ;-;

Sam isn’t left alone for very long after Toni visits. The knocking is gentler, this time, and when he looks up from the sigils he’s started doodling, he’s surprised to hear a woman speak from the other side. “Mr. Winchester? May I come in?”

“Uh… yeah, sure.” It’s a little odd to be asked permission to be seen by his captors, but if nothing else, it’s got his interest piqued. “Come in.”

The lock clicks, and the door opens to reveal a young woman, maybe a little older than Toni, with blonde curls pinned back from her face and a black bag over her shoulder. The white cross emblazoned on its side tells him that she’s come with first aid supplies, and he watches curiously as she steps inside. Just behind her, a man stands, Sam’s age or a little older, with high cheekbones and light hair that ring oddly familiar.

“You make one wrong move, and I’ll get the other side to match,” he warns, giving Sam a sneer. He glances at the woman as she steps inside, making a bit of a face. “Make it quick, Gab. Minimal contact.”

With that, he steps back outside and closes the door once more. Sam’s left with the woman and looks back towards her just in time to watch her roll her eyes.

“I swear, he wouldn’t know his head from his ass if he kept his eyes closed,” she mutters, and Sam barks out a surprised laugh. She turns her eyes to him, then, and gives him a proper smile. “I’m sorry for him. All of them, I suppose. They’ve been rather awful to you, haven’t they?” She moves closer, but she moves slow; he isn’t sure whether it’s out of fear or respect, but he remains seated and watches her curiously. “My name is Gabrielle. Dr. Gabrielle Moore. Or Lady Gabrielle Moore, but putting the two together always sounds silly.” She sits down on the edge of his bed with a smile. “Gabrielle is just fine. And of course I know who you are, Sam.”

Sam nods slowly and watches as she sets her bag down and unzips it. It unfolds to reveal an extremely well-stocked first aid kit, which he supposes makes sense. “You’re here to fix me up?”

“Yes, that’s right.” She nods again and glances up at him, eyes moving between his face and his injured shoulder. She wears glasses, with thick black frames that sit loose on the bridge of her nose. “Would you mind taking off your shirt? I need to change your bandages. I can’t imagine they did a very good job on the plane. We could probably get you something cleaner to wear, too, if you’d like.”

Sam shakes his head because the clothes he’s wearing are almost the entire sum total of everything he owns here. He moves to unbutton his shirt, all the same, because she’s the nicest person he’s met here and there’s no sense in refusing medical care.

It’s quiet for a couple minutes as Sam gets the shirt out of the way and Gabrielle gets to work, carefully peeling away the old bandages to inspect his wound. Sam keeps his eyes on some arbitrary spot on the wall, holding in any sounds and keeping his wincing to a minimum. Even if she seems nice, showing weakness in a place like this is the last thing he wants to do, and he’s got a feeling that asking for a few shots to help with the pain isn’t an option. He settles for keeping to his thoughts and letting her do her job, content in the silence and soaking up the presence of another non-hostile human being.

“You and your brother.” She’s quiet when she speaks, and her hands don’t slow down. She’s cleaned the dried blood away and is starting to re-bandage the wound. Everything must be in working order. Sam doesn’t say a word, but he doesn’t try to stop her, either. “You two saved the world, right? From the Darkness?”

“Dean saved us.” Sam doesn’t look at her, throat tight when he thinks about the last time he was in Dean’s arms. “Dean’s the one who stopped it.”

“You two always work together.” He does turn to look, then, and her eyes are on his shoulder but she’s biting her lip, worrying it between her teeth. “I was still in school when you stopped the Apocalypse, but I remember how scared everyone was. We were all bunking down, getting ready to die, you know? And I kept hearing the name Winchester, but I didn’t…” Her hands go still for a moment, and Sam realizes they’re trembling. “I didn’t know who you were until later. Until it was all over. No one got hurt, except- except you. You’ve saved us all so many times, and now...”

Sam is speechless. He doesn’t have a damn thing to say to that because Gabrielle looks like she’s on the verge of tears, and he- he doesn’t know what to do with this. He’s grown numb, over the years, to being blamed for freeing Lucifer and setting the apocalypse into motion- tries to convince himself of that, anyways; it’s easier to pretend like it doesn’t sting- but this is new. This is someone saying _thank you_ and Sam doesn’t have the damnedest idea of what he’s supposed to do with that.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers once she’s fastened the bandage, and her fingertips linger on his skin for a few extra seconds. They’re warm, and when Sam finally looks at her properly, she turns away, reaching up to rub at her eyes. “I’m sorry, Sam, I shouldn’t… you don’t deserve this. I’m sorry about Dean, and about- about all this.”

“It’s not your fault.” The response comes to Sam’s lips even though he feels like his brain has stalled, and he watches her with concern as she starts packing her things. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

But she doesn’t seem to be listening, fumbling over herself in her hurry to go. Right when she’s stood herself up and shouldered her bag, starting to turn away, Sam stands, too. Takes a chance when he reaches out and catches her wrist gently in the circle of his fingers, and she stops dead.

“Thank you, Gabrielle,” he says gently, and he can feel her trembling again. “For taking care of me.”

He doesn’t expect her to turn around, and he doesn’t expect it when she’s suddenly in his arms, giving him a tight hug around his middle. His chin bumps against the top of her head and slowly, he hugs her back, breathing out slow. It’s a short moment of affection, but one that warms something in him and makes it a little easier to imagine waking up to face whatever might be in store for him tomorrow.

“Be safe,” she tells him, and then she’s pulling away, clutching the strap of her bag and hurrying to the door. The man from before opens it up when she knocks, and gives Sam a dirty look right up until it closes behind her.

Sam is left alone and confused and warm, and he slowly makes his way back to bed, sitting down in the spot Gabrielle has vacated and staring at the wall.

Maybe he isn’t quite as alone here as he’d thought. It’s the most comfort he’s had since losing Dean to begin with.

It makes falling asleep a little bit easier knowing that someone out there wants him to wake up.

* * *

Dean doesn’t sleep for very long. He’s restless and his dreams are plagued with a thousand of the worst-case scenarios for how this could all end up; Sam could be hurt or dead or irreparably broken, and Dean is scared. He’s terrified, and he doesn’t want to have to consider the possibility that their mission to rescue his brother will be anything but a success story.

Two hours of tossing and turning and he can’t take it any more; there are bags under his eyes but he’s out of bed anyways, stops short of leaving the room when he catches the glint of light on brass at his bedside. He hasn’t put the amulet back on since having it returned to begin with, but…

The weight is familiar around his neck, and the way it knocks against his chest when he moves makes him feel a little bit better. Sam would want him to have it on, and he doesn’t intend to take it off until his brother is home safe.

Castiel is still in the library when he returns, but it’s a surprise to see Mary there, as well. She sits by herself, at the opposite end of the table, still wrapped in Sam’s blankets and wearing Dean’s shirt. She’s got her eyes on the angel still hard at work, obviously wary and not entirely comfortable. If Castiel notices her attention, he doesn’t acknowledge it, head bowed as he works through more of the lore.

“Hey,” Dean says to them both, and watches both pairs of eyes turn towards him. Castiel’s brow furrows and Dean suspects he’s about to get a lecture about the care and keeping of a human body, so he continues quickly. “I’m gonna get something to eat real quick. Cas, you good?”

“I’ll come with you.” Mary stands, blankets around her like a heavy cloak, and she’s already headed towards the hallway. The right one, oddly enough; perhaps she’s been paying special attention to be able to navigate on her own. Either way, she vanishes towards the kitchen a moment later, and the room is left quiet, Dean turning back towards his friend at the table and raising an eyebrow.

“I don’t think she likes me.” Castiel frowns and looks back down towards his book. “Go eat, Dean. I’ll keep searching.”

There’s not a whole lot he can say to that, so Dean just nods and moves to follow after his mother.

She’s restless, too, by the look of things. She’s moving around the kitchen when Dean arrives, shuffling across the floor in her bare feet and inspecting every inch of it like she expects something to jump out at her. She lingers near the toaster, the microwave, the kettle; it hits Dean hard that she’s from the year 1983 and all of it is new to her. It’s staggering, how much she’s going to have to learn, and he takes a slow, deep breath. Start small.

“Did you sleep okay?” he asks, because the silence is getting to him and he thinks maybe a distraction will be good for them both. “We can, uh. Get some blankets out to the car, if you want. A pillow or something.”

She stops moving, then, just as Dean steps towards the pantry. Toast is the most complicated thing he’s up to preparing right now. “Guess I wasn’t as sneaky as I thought, huh?”

“I was ready to go chase you down if you’d left on foot.” He counts out a few pieces of bread and keeps Mary in his peripherals as he gets the toaster going. “Couldn’t sleep?”

She’s quiet, and at first, Dean thinks maybe she’s not going to answer him at all. It’s not terribly surprising, and he almost moves on, but.

“She’s the same.”

Dean glances up, at that, to look at her properly, and there’s a distant look on Mary’s face. Her eyes are hazy, unfocused. She pulls the blankets a little tighter around herself and breathes out slow. “What?”

“The car. John’s stupid car.” She smiles wryly, and Dean remembers helping his dad pick it out to begin with. “She’s just the same as- as before.”

And Dean thinks about the Impala, for a moment, and thinks about the rest of the world. Thinks about thirty years of time moving forward and dragging technology and homes and people with it, and thinks about being thrown into something so vastly unfamiliar. Living with strangers in a strange place and being expected to just- to just be okay.

He thinks about the car, and her worn leather seats and the initials scratched into the inside panelling and the purr of the engine, and he thinks maybe he’s not the only one who considers her home.

“Trust me, she was a better pick than the hippie van.”

It startles a laugh out of Mary and the tension cracks, leaving tentative smiles and a warmer atmosphere. Dean has to remind himself that even though she’s his mother- even though he looks at her and sees something soft and pure and untouchable- she’s still a person, too. A woman thrown into a scary situation with no one to turn to but him. He needs to earn her trust, and he needs to be someone she might be able to love like the son he is.

He hasn’t been a son in a decade, and it might take some relearning for them both.

“Do you want something to wear?” he asks just as the toast pops. Mary jumps a little, and Dean turns to get it ready, piling up buttered slices on a plate he pulls from the cupboard. It’s an odd slice of domesticity in the middle of something so otherworldly. “I mean- we can get you pants, at least.”

A beat passes, and she breathes out another laugh. Dean decides he likes the way it sounds and holds onto it tight, soaking up every drop of sunshine it feeds him. “Pants would be nice.”

He nods and turns back towards the library with the plates in hand, tilting his head. “C’mon, you can sit and I’ll find you something to put on.”

“But-” And that’s when things falter, again, when Dean stops short and Mary’s breath catches and he has to turn to face her, concerned. He can’t identify the look in her eyes, really- something distrustful, mostly. Something that reminds him of how it feels to work with Crowley and Rowena on the odd occasion that he needs the help. “But the… the angel’s in there.”

Maybe Castiel was right.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, slow and uncertain. He’s not sure where to place himself, here, and treads carefully. Doesn’t want to damage the little bit of progress they’ve made now. “He’s helping us. He’s a friend.”

Except- except.

Mary still doesn’t look convinced, and Dean takes a long moment to work through what she knows about angels. Michael wiped her memories from their one and only meeting, and otherwise, Dean’s sure it’s only his storytelling that should give her any foundation on which to base her judgement. It’s been a few hours, but he’s sure he told Castiel’s story correctly and made it clear which side he falls on. “What’s wrong, Mary?”

She won’t look him in the eye, and the furrow in her brow makes him think that she isn’t entirely sure, either. “It just feels… it feels like we shouldn’t be working with angels,” she replies softly. “I can’t explain it, but doesn’t it- doesn’t it feel wrong? I don’t think we can trust them. Not to help us.”

Michael wiped her memories, but angels have made mistakes before. Dean remembers the way Lisa looked at him in that hospital, the confused half-recognition she’d clung to even after waking up. He remembers Zachariah dropping him and his brother in that damn office building and the way Sam couldn’t leave him alone, even though they existed in such different worlds within the workplace. Angels aren’t perfect, and maybe half-memories and instincts linger after Michael’s interference. Maybe she remembers the way he’d possessed John, or killed Sam. Maybe she remembers fighting Anna. There’s no telling what hints of that night linger in Mary’s mind, but if her gut is telling her not to trust angels…

This might be a little harder than he’d thought.

“He’s okay,” Dean promises softly. He steps towards her, makes sure to move slow and careful because she’s a hunter, deep down, and those instincts don’t fade with time. Not when you grow up like she did. “He’s saved me and Sam too many times to count. Look, I get it, most angels are dicks-”

“Language,” she interrupts, and it’s so hilariously parental that it seems to catch them both by surprise. Mary looks away, clears her throat. Dean just stares for a moment. “Sorry.”

“Most of them suck,” he amends a moment later. “But Cas is a good guy. Just- just trust me, okay?”

He holds out his hand, then, palm-up, and waits. It’s a long few seconds and he starts to worry she’s not going to respond but eventually, she does, breathes out slow and reaches out and lets her fingers rest against his.

“It doesn’t feel right.”

“I know.”

She follows him back towards the library, all the same.

“Pants,” he reminds her. Castiel is still working when they make it there, but he stays quiet and keeps his head down. Dean’s grateful, somewhere in the back of his head. He doesn’t even know where to begin having the two of them get along. “They might be a little big, but that’s better than nothing, right?”

“As long as they’re pants.” Mary nods, and she lets him guide her to a seat at the table, not as far from Castiel as she’d been earlier, but still maintaining a comfortable distance between them. Just as Dean goes to pull away, her grip on his hand tightens, and he pauses. “Is there something I can do to help? With- with finding Sam, I mean?”

Dean hesitates a moment and glances towards Castiel. Their eyes meet, and Dean’s quiet for a moment before turning back to his mother. “Cas should be able to set you in the right direction. We’re just trying to figure out who took him right now.”

And she doesn’t look entirely thrilled with that, but nods anyways, turning to look at Castiel for a moment. “Alright,” she agrees eventually. “Where do I start?”

Dean pulls away as Castiel starts explaining the work they’ve been doing, and heads back towards their bedrooms. He’s got some old jeans that’ll be a little long and a little big around the waist, but better than anything in Sam’s drawers, and maybe, if he spends some times searching, he could turn up some clothes from the odd female visitor. Charlie, he thinks with a certain shortness of breath, has probably left clothes here in the past. He tucks that thought away for later and heads towards his bedroom.

He turns up a couple good pairs of jeans and a clean shirt and something else that he tucks away for later, making a mental note of its presence on his bedside table. When he returns to the library, Mary’s where he left her but there’s a book open in front of her now, one of the ones detailing everything the Men of Letters know about angels, and he wonders if Castiel picked it out intentionally so she can learn as she works.

Dean brings her the clothes and tells her, quietly, that there’s a room just down the hall where she can change, and he waits until she’s left the room before he turns to Castiel, working his lip between his teeth. “She’s not keen on angels.”

“I thought it might be something like that.” He watches Castiel frown, but continue working. “I don’t know what to do to change her opinion of me.”

“Yeah, well that makes two of us.” Dean sighs and reaches up to rub at his forehead. He’s developing a headache and decidedly ignores the fact that it’s probably been caused by his distinct lack of sleep. That can wait until they find Sam. “Just… be nice, I guess. She’ll warm up to you eventually.”

Castiel nods, and Mary returns to the room a moment later, Sam’s blanket and Dean’s shirt bundled up neatly in her arms. She doesn’t say a word, simply returning to her seat, setting her armful of things in the chair beside her, and returning to her book.

Dean takes a deep breath and plops down somewhere in the space between them both. They’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and it’s already been too long since Sam went missing. There’s not a second to waste in finding his brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam's left alone for a while. It doesn't work as intended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just like this story a lot.

After Gabrielle leaves, Sam isn’t sure how long he spends on his own. His watch and the rumbling in his stomach tell him that hours have passed, but he feels more like he’s landed himself in a timeless vacuum where every second blurs into an eternity. With nothing to do but pace his little room and fill the paper he’s been given, he finds himself restless, eventually managing to settle down at his desk with the pen in hand.

_Dean._

_None of this feels real… I guess I keep thinking that it’s just another nightmare, you know? I just have to keep pinching myself, and maybe eventually I’ll wake up. I’ll be back in the States, and the world will be okay, and you’ll be_

Stops. Takes an unsteady breath and squeezes his eyes shut for a long few seconds. He doesn’t finish that sentence.

_Not everyone here is bad, though. I made a friend, sort of. She thanked me for everything we’ve done, which makes me think maybe she doesn’t know about everything we’ve done, but it was… it was nice. Really, really nice. I hope she comes back._

_I hope you come back. You’re really, really good at coming back._

_Please come back?_

_-your little brother_

It joins the other note in his pocket and Sam’s left, once again, with nothing to fill his time.

He doesn’t want to burn through all his paper just in case he isn’t allowed more, so he leaves the pen alone and just sits in his chair for a while. He’s used to feeling hungry, even if it hasn’t been an issue since college, so the gnawing in the pit of his stomach fades into the back of his mind. He’s got clean water at the sink in the bathroom and though it sits heavy in his gut, it soothes his dry throat and acts as an illusion of food.

He knows how to be hungry. He’ll be okay.

So he uses his time to train. He does sit-ups and push-ups as long as he’s got the energy for it. He knows he needs to be careful with how much he exerts himself without fuel to replenish him, but sitting idle will drive him insane and that won’t be good for anyone. Besides, the burn in his muscles and the pounding of his heart feel good; they’re the only reminder he has anymore that he’s alive and real. He’s hungry, he’s alone, and half of his soul has been cruelly torn away, but at least he’s still breathing.

With every hour that passes, the activity gets a little harder and his breath gets a little shorter. His stomach feels hollow and concave and the growling is insistent before it begins to fade away. Water is too much for him, after a while; his stomach is too empty to accept much of anything and puking isn’t on his to-do list. He starts sleeping more than anything else, spending his waking hours staring up at his ceiling.

Sam’s watch tells him it’s been just under seventy-two hours since Gabrielle visited. The pain in his shoulder is a dull ache, along with the rest of his body, and he wonders sort of absently if the Letters have decided he’s not of any use, and not worth keeping alive. He can’t bring himself to entirely disagree, and closes his eyes once more.

He wonders what Castiel thinks has happened to him. Maybe his angel friend will find something better in life than trailing after a couple of broken hunters once he accepts that they’re both gone.

A hollow, wooden knocking sound blurs together with the way his heart beats loud in his ears, and Sam doesn’t open his eyes. Maybe it’d be easier for his body to just give up; a human can live a few weeks without food if they’re properly hydrated, but that sounds like an awfully long time to hang around. Dean’s waiting for him somewhere, and Sam doesn’t want to make him wait longer than he has to.

“Given up already?” Sam doesn’t hear the door open, but there’s no mistaking Gerald’s voice as the man lets himself in. Sam keeps his eyes closed and breathes out slow through his nose. It’s a childish notion, but maybe he pretends he isn’t here, he’ll be left alone to live out his last few days in peace. “And here I was led to believe that hunters were tougher than that. Only thing you lot seem to be any good for.”

Another taunt. Sam doesn’t respond; even if he wanted to give Gerald the satisfaction of his anger, he simply doesn’t have it in him right now. It seems like such a trivial thing now, especially when his energy is so much better off being put towards dying a little faster. No need to exert himself fighting a useless fight.

Several seconds pass, and then he hears a scoff. “It doesn’t have to be like this, you know. One word- one promise that you’ll serve our cause- and this changes. I’m sure you miss eating.”

Maybe he does. He can’t say for sure anymore, though it’s clear to him now that this treatment serves a purpose. They’re trying to break him; where their initial offer didn’t get his attention, a war of attrition had been their next plan of attack.

Sam is coming to realize that these people don’t have the faintest idea of what they’re dealing with. Perhaps they haven’t anticipated that he’s more than happy to wilt away to nothing, if it means inching closer to that beautiful finality of being reunited with his brother. Their loss, he supposes. A quicker route on the way to meeting Dean if he doesn’t have to worry about dying while their backs are turned.

His lack of response must be frustrating, because Gerald makes a low, disgusted noise. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth, Winchester. Tainted half-blood like you doesn’t even deserve the name.”

Something about the words registers as _wrong_ , but Sam’s not got the energy to figure out what. He just keeps breathing for now, and listens as Gerald walks away. The door closes and locks behind him and Sam’s left alone once more, presumably to live out his last few days in continued isolation. It doesn’t sound all that bad.

It doesn’t last nearly as long as he’s expecting, though. Even as time blurs into a meaningless slur of heartbeats, when his door is unlocked once again and opened, he’s sure it hasn’t even been a whole day. A few hours, maybe. He doesn’t quite have the ambition to glance towards his watch.

“Keep it quick,” someone says outside, and it’s not hard to discern from the voice and the sour tone that it’s Toni. “Shout if anything happens.” The door closes again, and Sam waits, hears some faint shuffling by the door as his guests approach.

Someone gasps, hushed and feminine. At least it isn’t Gerald again. “Oh, Sam,” is whispered, and he recognizes Gabrielle’s voice. There are two distinct sets of footsteps, though, and though the room is dark when he manages to open his eyes, there’s a second form behind hers when she moves to perch on the edge of his bed, one hand going to his forehead. It’s blissfully cool against his skin, but she doesn’t seem happy, glancing towards her companion. “Rachel, here, let’s- let’s sit. It’s going to be okay, Sam, I promise.”

There’s some more shuffling as the other woman- Rachel- brings the desk chair over to his bedside. A murmured apology and the lights turn on, prompting Sam to squeeze his eyes shut against their onslaught. Gabrielle helps him to sit up, stacking the couple pillows he has behind him to keep him upright, and even that movement is enough to send him into a bit of a dizzy spell, heart racing as he tries to catch his breath again. Gabrielle makes a wounded sound, and Rachel stays quiet as he sorts himself out.

“You need to eat,” Gabrielle tells him once he’s settled, slowly blinking the stars out of his eyes. He doesn’t look at her, staring blankly in the direction of the opposite wall. A human face is far too much information to try to process right now. “I had no idea they were… I didn’t know. I’m so sorry, I just- I didn’t…”

Sam shakes his head minutely. Too much movement and he feels like he’s going to throw up, not that there’s anything left in his stomach to expel. He waits quietly as the two of them get organized, some low words exchanged as he’s set up with a bowl in his lap and a spoon in Gabrielle’s hand. It’s some sort of soup, and the smell’s got Sam’s stomach growling violently. Chicken broth, he thinks.

“We already let it cool off a bit,” she tells him quietly. “Is it okay if I feed you, for now? You- you seem tired.”

Sam breathes out softly and nods. Closes his eyes for a moment before he opens them once more and manages to smile for her. He doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve someone like Gabrielle, who’s apparently taken it upon herself to care for him, but right now, all he can be is grateful.

The three of them are quiet as Gabrielle starts to feed him, taking little spoonfuls of the broth and bringing it to Sam’s lips for him to drink down in careful sips. It’s slow going, but the soup is warm and soothing and starts to settle his stomach as they work through the bowl. It’ll be a little while before he’s back to full strength, but already, he feels better, sitting up a little higher all by himself so he can finish the last little bit of the bowl.

Gabrielle smiles at him when he finishes, big and proud, and takes the bowl away. “There you go,” she tells him softly. “We’re going to make sure they’re taking proper care of you, okay? You don’t- you don’t deserve this. Any of this.”

Rachel, who’s been quiet up to this point, finally speaks, and Sam turns towards her, a little surprised. “They’ve given up on starving you into submission, Sam, but they won’t give up on turning you. Just… be careful. Don’t trust them.”

She looks away from him after that, and Sam’s left wondering as Gabrielle takes his hand and squeezes it, fingers fitting together for a brief moment. “I’ll be back to check on you soon, okay? Try to stay safe until then. Who knows what the world would do without Sam Winchester?”

As the two of them stand and head towards the door, Sam’s quiet. Murmurs a “thank you” just as they step out, but is too deep in his own mind to see the annoyed look Toni throws him through the crack.

He can only wonder what the world is doing without Dean. There’s something horribly wrong about the thought of it continuing on without his brother, with daily life moving forward as if nothing’s happened, and for a long time, Sam just stares at the ceiling, lost and alone and alive. As grateful as he is for Gabrielle’s concern, he’s left wondering what he’s supposed to do with himself, existing alone in the world. What’s the point of being cared for if his other half isn’t there to see him through to the conclusion?

He’s lucky the room is relatively small, because his arms are just long enough to reach out and pull his pen and a piece of paper towards him. His fingers tremble when he starts to write, but it’s not like anyone else is going to be reading these, anyways.

_Dean._

_I came close. Real close, I think. How twisted is it that I was happy they were going to let me starve? It’d have been so much easier than trying to follow you on my own._

_I don’t know if I could. I don’t think I’m brave enough to do that myself. I’ve always kind of been a coward like that, huh? I miss you so bad I can’t breathe, but I can’t…_

_I can’t._

_At least someone’s rooting for me in here. I don’t think she’d let me go through with it, anyways. She’d be real disappointed._

_They were rooting for you, too, Dean. They were rooting for us. Too bad they couldn’t get the package deal._

_I know you would want me to keep going, keep fighting. All that crap. Looks like I’m going to have to give it a shot, after all. Doesn’t mean I’ll be happy about it, though._

_I miss you, asshole._

_-your little brother_

Sam folds the note into a careful little square, and he returns the pen to his desk, and he closes his eyes.

He sleeps a little better this time around. He dreams about his big brother and the Fourth of July, and things seem almost okay.

* * *

Hours tick by at a snail’s pace, and Dean’s been staring at the same page for what feels like a thousand years. He can’t focus; research has never been his strong suit simply because he gets bored so damn easily, and even now with the motivator of rescuing his brother, he can’t make his eyes sit still on the page. They bounce around between words and pictures and illegibly-scrawled notes in the margins, and all he’s managed to do for the last several minutes is give himself a headache.

The silence is getting to him, too, and eventually he glances up, trying to be subtle about checking on his companions. Castiel, unsurprisingly, is still hard at work, brow furrowed as he works through one of their Enochian texts. No worries there; when he turns to look at Mary, though, he’s a little startled to meet green eyes that match his own, and they both blink. Maybe he isn’t the only one getting restless.

“I need a breather,” he says to her, though it’s meant for Castiel, too. He stands up and rolls his shoulders, hesitates as he glances between the two pairs of eyes that rest on him now. “Cas, you good?”

Castiel nods, and his eyes go briefly to Mary before returning to Dean. “I’ll call for you if I find anything relevant. Take your time.”

Dean nods, then turns back to his mom, only hesitating a moment. “Want to stretch your legs for a bit?”

He’s pretty sure he isn’t imagining the relief in her eyes when she nods, standing and stretching her arms up above her head before joining him. He nods at Castiel once more, then leads the way out of the library, no real destination in mind besides _away._

“Sam’s the one who’s good at this stuff,” he says to fill the silence, because it occurs to him that their mom doesn’t know these things about them. She doesn’t know that Sam’s a giant nerd, or that he likes eating salads more than greasy burgers, or that he’d probably kill someone for an especially sad-looking dog. “Loves burying himself in research. Lore and history and all that kind of stuff. Ever since he was a kid.”

Mary goes a little stiff in the corner of his eye and Dean curses himself. He thinks she’s probably still getting used to the fact that her children are hunters to begin with; to be so carelessly reminded that they’d started so young- as _children_ ; barely old enough to be home on their own when they were learning to tote adult-sized weapons- it isn’t fair to her. Not when she’s done so much to try to prevent it in the first place.

He clears his throat in the awkward silence that follows, tries to take a deep breath. “You- you were a hunter, too, yeah? Before… before?”

“I was.” She’s quiet, and she’s not looking at him, but at least she’s responding. Maybe he hasn’t screwed up too badly yet. “It ran in the family.”

_Saving people, hunting things. The family business._ The words have never rang more true, and Dean thinks it’s kind of funny, in a twisted way. It’s always been in their blood, after all. “But you stopped.”

“I did.” A long, pregnant pause, and then she does look at him, chin held high and something steely in her gaze. “I wanted to have a family, and I didn’t want them anywhere near hunting.”

It goes unspoken between them, the tragedy in how badly it backfired. Dean remembers walking in on her making her deal; the hollow desperation in her eyes as John was revived. He doesn’t say a damn word about it now; they’re already in too far and he doesn’t want to bring up any worse memories than he already has.

So Dean nods, and he looks away, unable to withstand the eye contact for so long. It still aches, somewhere in the middle of his chest, to look at her at all. “Was it worth it?”

“Yes.” And she doesn’t even hesitate. She doesn’t flinch or back down or look away; Dean can still feel her eyes on him and she sounds firm, strong. “It was. It was worth it for John, and- and for you and Sammy. It was worth it. I couldn’t live like that any longer. Not after everything it took from me.”

And God, does Dean ever know how that feels. He remembers what Sam was like at that age, too; it’s impossible to forget Stanford, or the years leading up to it. How badly his little brother had wanted to strike out on his own and build a normal life. Worse, maybe, is how close he’d gotten to succeeding. The two of them seem to have that in common.

“Did you ever think about going back?” he asks instead of voicing that. It’s Sam’s story to tell once they get him back. “Did you miss it?”

“The hunting? Hardly.” But then Dean looks up and her eyes have gone a little softer. “I missed helping people. You know, I’d get so upset whenever John tried to share the news with me… every headline sounded like a hunt that needed my attention, and I’d have to work so hard to ignore it. To convince myself that it wasn’t my place, or that someone else would handle it.” She smiles wryly, meeting Dean’s eyes once more. “It got a little easier with time to pretend that it was just another animal attack, or a runaway.”

“Yeah.” That’s a life that Dean knows firsthand, and he’d barely made it through that year with his sanity intact. He used to keep track; a body count in the back of his head every morning for all the lives he could’ve saved. A little notebook with every name of every person who’s ever slipped between his fingers. He still keeps it now, tucked away with his few other important belongings in his bedroom. “Guess it’s always easier to pretend, huh?”

When Mary responds, she sounds tired, suddenly, looking away from Dean. “Why does it matter? It’s the past, Dean. It’s over.”

And Dean wishes he could let it go. He wants to be able to smile and tell her that things will be okay, and that he can handle this on his own, but- but he’s down a partner. He’s missing his other half on what’s sure to shape into one hell of a dangerous job, and he knows better than most how stupid it is to go into these things alone. It’s one thing to have Castiel along, but Dean needs someone who knows the work; who’s had the same training he has and understands the way he thinks.

“You said you wanted to help find Sammy, right?” And he rolls his weight between his two feet, and he breathes in deep, and forces himself to keep his tone even. “You remember how to shoot?”

He needs a hunter, and Mary Campbell was a hunter through and through. Now it’s just a matter of bringing that back to surface.

She looks surprised, and then confused, and then it melts away into something a little harder. Her shoulders square and she meets his eyes and Dean’s reminded, for a moment, of the teenager half his weight who nearly had him on the ground back in 1973.

“You don’t forget how to shoot.”

It rings so true to his dad’s voice- the sort of thing that John used to bark at them in the midst of training along with _move faster_ and _hit harder_ and _the werewolves ain’t gonna give you time to catch your breath_ \- that Dean almost stands down.

“Prove it.”

Almost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everybody reading and stuff. You're awesome. <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He knows they’re trying, and he knows that his own selfish thoughts about wanting to end his own life- about wanting to follow his brother the way he’s always intended to- should be shameful. Regardless of whatever else is going on, he should be grateful that there are still people trying to do him right in this little slice of hell.
> 
> It doesn’t make it any easier to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're just with Sam today, and he gets a better look at where he's staying. He also meets a new friend :>

Sam sleeps like the dead, thankfully dreamless as his body works to absorb the nutrients it’s been given, greedy after so long without sustenance. When he wakes, it’s to the sound of his door opening once more, though no one steps inside this time.

“You’re free to wander at your leisure.” Toni. She sounds bored and a little annoyed, though Sam’s gotten used to that from her by now. He slowly opens his eyes, blinking the spots out of his vision with the sudden light that the open door has cast into his room. “Don’t do anything stupid like try to kill someone. We can and will subdue you if need be.”

He doesn’t have a whole lot to say to that, and a moment later, the door closes once more. Absent, though, is the click of the lock, and as he works up the ambition to sit up properly, he wonders what’s changed. Between being brought here and waking up now, why have they so drastically changed the way they’re treating him? By the warning from Rachel before he’d gone to sleep, he needs to keep his guard up, so he stays where he is for now, ever wary in such a strange place. At least it’s quiet, and at least he’s free to leave whenever he works up the ambition to try.

With time and patience, Sam finds that he’s able to sit up on his own, and it’s not long before he’s swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He’s uncomfortable; probably a combination of the dirty clothes and the fact that he’s just stayed in bed for several days with them on. He eyes the door to his bathroom, grimaces, and forces himself to his feet, and from there it’s just a short stagger-walk across the room. He’s not back to full strength, yet, and he needs to stop at the door to catch his breath and get his vision back in order, but he’s still on his own two feet and that’s always been good enough for him.

The bathroom’s got a shower, and Sam takes the moment to lock the door- it’s sort of empowering, in a small way- before stripping out of his dirty clothes. They’re carefully folded and set on the counter, and he can only hope that they let him wash them sometime in the near future. He’s not quite ready to give up the only personal affects he’s got. Everything’s in order, and he leans over the start up the water- cranks the temperature up high as soon as he realizes he can- and then pauses when he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

He looks like shit. Like something straight out of a zombie movie; he’s even got the shambling movements in his weakened state now. The bandages aren’t as white as they were when Gabrielle put them on him to begin with, and his skin’s pale and grey-toned to match. He’s all purple bruising and hollow eyes, something empty about his expression that catches him off-guard. Against the stark white tile of the bathroom walls, the clean surfaces, the high ceiling- he looks wholly and entirely _alone._

Sam curls his fingers tight over the edge of clean porcelain and he stumbles over remembering how to breathe.

Why does he bother anymore? What’s the point of clinging to some half-imagined hope of his life going forward when the one person who’s made everything worth it is gone? Dean’s been his reason for being alive since Sam can remember having one to begin with; everything in his world begins and ends with his big brother, so who’s to say that this shouldn’t be his ending for good? The bookends of his life formed by Dean cradling him in his arms and then slipping away and inadvertently dragging Sam with him. It’s how they were always meant to be, anyways- what good is one half of a soul?

Sam’s eyes drift to the cupboard under the sink, and he’s got half a mind to wonder whether he’s been trusted with anything sharp. A razor blade would be enough, he thinks; the right cut and four minutes and he’ll be trailing right after his brother, the way he has been since the day he was born, and none of this will matter anymore.

The mirror is starting to fog up with the shower’s steam, and as his reflection blurs before his eyes, Sam forces himself to blink, wrenching his attention away from it and staring down towards his hands, instead. Worn and calloused; long fingers that press into the smooth surface under them and turn white-knuckled under the pressure. Strong hands. Hands he’s used to help people; save people. Hands his brother used to hold for him when they crossed the street together, before monsters were real and he kept a .45 under his pillow every night.

Sam breathes out slow and he closes his eyes altogether. He remembers Gabrielle’s words, and he remembers her promise to check in on him later. He thinks about her having to find his body, bloody and lifeless and ruined, and he.

He pushes away from the sink and turns to his shower, instead. He’s got dirt and sweat and a million trains of thought to scrub clean, and there’s no telling how much time he’ll have alone. Nothing to do now but get to work, so he carefully strips off his bandages and steps under the water.

It’s methodical and then probably longer than it has any right to be; Sam scrubs every inch of himself pink and then just stands under the water for a while, eyes closed and head tilted back so the water slips down over his shoulders, warming his whole body. He hadn’t realized how cold he’d felt until the warmth starts seeping back into his skin, and he can feel his muscles slowly starting to relax, knots undoing after everything that’s happened over the past couple days. He does his best to avoid his wound, but still winces when the water meets it, teeth grinding against each other as he tries to keep quiet. Some of the water runs pink, but the wound stays mostly closed, and that’s going to have to be enough for now.

The water doesn’t get any colder- he catches himself wondering about the capacities of their facilities on site for a moment- but eventually, Sam decides he’s spent long enough doing what’s now amounted to nothing. He twists the handle down, grabs blindly for a towel, and starts patting himself carefully dry as he steps out onto the cool tiles once more, glancing hesitantly towards his dirty clothes where he’s left them on the seat of the toilet. He lingers there for a few seconds, then shakes his head and wraps the towel around his waist. Might as well see what other options he’s been given. He only pauses long enough to carefully dig the notes out of his pocket before stepping out.

Back in his room, he moves to inspect the dresser for the first time since his initial arrival. Most of the drawers are empty, but the very top two each contain some neatly folded clothes; one has sleep pants, hoodies, and soft-looking shirts with a note that just says _“try to stay comfortable. You need it right now. -G”_ while the second has a couple pairs of jeans along with several sets of more formal clothing. He opts to ignore the latter for the moment, and takes the time to pull on the softer pants, ignoring the shirts for now with his undressed wound in mind. It’s a relief to be in something clean, and the faint smell of laundry detergent reminds him distantly of home.

That thought leads in every direction he wants to avoid, so he holds his breath for the time it takes to cross the room over to his desk. It’s a relief to sit down again, and, for a few minutes, he just stares at the desk’s wooden surface. Eventually, he sets out his notes to Dean on the table, gently smoothing their creases out and looking at the careful handwriting that devolves into nearly-illegible scrawl by the third. He tucks them away, once again, into his pocket, and is left to nothing but his thoughts for the time being, right up until someone knocks on his door.

Sam doesn’t make a sound, but a moment later it’s cracked open. The absence of immediate verbal abuse tells him it’s probably not Toni, so he glances up to see Gabrielle poking her head in, offering him a half-smile that he can’t help but return, however slightly.

“You’re awake.” She sounds relieved, and as she opens the door a little wider to step inside, Sam notices a couple things; she’s got her medical supplies with her again, which is no surprise, but more interestingly, she isn’t alone. “Are you up for a little company?”

The woman that Gabrielle has brought along looks to be roughly the same age as her, with orangey-red hair that falls past her shoulders. There’s an energy about her that feels like ripped jeans and muddy boots, and the way she’s almost bouncing on the balls of her feet with pent-up energy reminds Sam a little bit of his brother. “Sure.”

That’s got the newer girl smiling, big and excited and mischievous, and she slips into the room alongside Gabrielle as the door’s pushed shut behind them. It’s more comfortable this way, Sam decides. “This is Amber,” Gabrielle tells him. “She’s my- um, we’re friends. She wanted to come say hello.”

“I wanted to meet Sam Winchester,” Amber interjects. “I heard that Toni was being sent for you, but- well, honestly, I never thought she’d actually get it done. You’re supposed to be a slippery bastard, aren’t you?”

There’s nothing Sam can do to fight the smile that tugs at the corners of his lips. “I’ve heard that once or twice.”

The both of them come closer, with Gabrielle gesturing to his shoulder and asking a soft “may I?” while Sam nods and Amber stays on her feet, apparently unable to still herself for the moment. “Hell, I grew up hearing stories about the Winchesters. First your dad, mostly. I didn’t even know he had any children, but then you two starting cropping up more and more, and seeing everything you did…” She pauses, shakes her head in apparent wonder. “It was amazing, you know? One thing to read about all the things out in the world, but I can’t even imagine fighting them like you do.”

“Did.” It’s a soft, absent correction as Gabrielle’s fingertips brush gently over his skin as she starts to work. Sam drops his eyes to the floor and the room’s quiet for a long few seconds. “I did.”

Everything feels a little heavier now and Sam takes a moment to curse himself for dampening Amber’s excitement. She seems like a nice girl, but all the talk of the victories he’s had with his brother is constricting around his chest and making it hard to breathe. Dean’s more like a dream now, something distant and fleeting that only really exists when he closes his eyes. Every time he blinks, it hurts a little bit more to remember the reality of the world.

“You should be now, too.” Amber’s voice has sobered up a little, and Sam keeps his eyes down, somewhere between the carpeted floors and the dress shoes she’s wearing. “They can’t- I don’t know who they think they are, snatching you up like this. You and Dean-” She stops, hesitates. Sam hears her take a deep breath. “It’s not fair. They can’t just play God like this, locking you away when you’ve done more good in the world than those old men could ever hope to approach-”

“Amber.”

Gabrielle’s the one who cuts her off, and some sort of silent exchange happens between them. When Sam looks up, Amber’s expression is softer, eyes on Gabrielle until she looks back towards Sam. “It just isn’t fair,” she repeats, glancing away and reaching up to rub at her mouth.

“Most things aren’t,” Sam tells her, and he smiles a little sadly. It isn’t fair that he’s here, or that Dean’s dead. It isn’t fair that they’re the ones who always need to save the world, and that they’re the ones who always take the blame for it needing to be saved in the first place. It’s not fair that no one knows what they do except for the people who want to punish them for it. Nothing is fair anymore. “Just have to learn to get over it, I guess.”

Amber breathes in deep again before she looks his way, studying his face. Sam doesn’t look away, and eventually, she nods. Gabrielle’s just finishing up with his bandages as she speaks once more. “Gabby wanted to show you the place, now that you’re allowed to move around properly. You think you’re up for a tour?”

Sam isn’t sure he’s up for much of anything that involves more than laying down and accepting the inevitability of his own death, but Gabrielle’s holding her breath at his side and Amber looks hopeful, too. For all the Letters who’ve done their best to lock him up here and turn his life into more of a hell than Dean’s death has caused, it seems that he’s got a couple friends here who want to give him something better, and he knows enough not to throw that away.

“Will someone try to shoot me again? I’m not really all that bulletproof.”

The lingering tension dissipates as Amber laughs, and Gabrielle lets out a half-muffled giggle. Sam manages to smile as Gabrielle helps him up before heading over to his drawers, digging around in the shirts. “I can’t make any promises, but it anyone tries, we’ll be there to keep you safe.”

“Damn right we will.” Amber throws a wink his way. “No one’s going to hurt Sam Winchester on my watch.”

At this point, Sam thinks that not getting hurt any worse might be the best he can ask for. There’s not a whole lot else that he can expect anymore.

Between the three of them, Sam gets a loose, soft t-shirt over his head without causing his shoulder too much pain. Though he can comfortably stand on his own for the moment, the both of them linger nearby as they lead him out of the room, more cheerful conversation starting up now that they’ve moved past their introductions.

“It’s really a nice place, provided you’re not spending your time here locked up,” Amber tells him. The hallway is just as clean as when he was lead here to begin with, but Sam takes the time to look around, anyways. By the sound of things, he’ll have plenty of time to himself to get acquainted with the place, so he might as well start to learn his way around. “Which you won’t be anymore, by the sound of things. You like to read, right? You’ll need to see the library.”

Sam counts three lefts and four rights on their way through what seems like an endless series of hallways, carefully constructing a map in his head so he’ll know, at the very least, where his room is relative to wherever they’re going now. He makes a note to figure out what each door they pass contains at a later time; the bunker back home has dozens of bedrooms upon dozens of _other_ rooms, the purpose of which he’s never had the chance to explore, and it’s several decades out of date, thanks to Abaddon’s slaughter of their late chapter. He can only imagine the difference in technology and protection, and for a moment, he can focus on that sense of curiosity instead of the crushing weight of the world from where it’s seated atop his shoulders.

A few minutes pass them by before they encounter other people, and even then, it’s quiet. Sam keeps his chin held high in defiance when they walk by a couple of sour-looking men, and later a small group of women. It’s an odd sort of juxtaposition; inside, he’s a ruin, slowly crumbling with the loss of his brother and only real purpose in life, but all he shows on his face is unbroken pride. For all the world has done its best to beat him down, he will not allow a collection of pretentious, self-righteous assholes to finish him off. Sam is many things, but he’s never been a quitter, and he’ll sooner die of starvation and heartbreak than see these people break him for good.

The whole way, Amber and Gabrielle flank him, chattering away with one another but attentive, all the same. It’s almost funny; Sam towers over them both, but they serve as a shield between him and the more hostile Letters, like his own, personal bodyguards. They slow down when he does and steady him when he stumbles, and, all things considered, he feels surprisingly safe in their collective presence. Every encounter they have is a non-event, and no one tries to confront him between their watchful stares. Sam might not be in fighting form right now, but there’s something to be said for being in the right company in a strange place.

“Technically, we have a few libraries,” Gabrielle tells him softly. There’s the distinct feeling of mutedness as they take a few more turns, stone floors replaced with hardwood along an arched hallway that stands out from the rest with the intricate carvings that decorate the high panelling in the walls. It’s got him wanting to stand up a little straighter just the same way it has him questioning his outfit, absurdly enough. Sweats and bare feet don’t fit into the high-society vibe it gives off. “There’s a few smaller ones scattered around. Mostly those ones are more specialized, focused on specific topics, dangerous contents, those sorts of things. But most of the books and things are kept in this one, and it’s the biggest of the lot.”

The hallway ends in a high, immaculate doorway, curving up in a delicate stone arch over their heads. The sigils carved into its surface look vaguely familiar- Enochian, maybe- but instead, Sam’s eyes are drawn to the interior of the library as Amber steps forward to lead him inside, eyes going big and round with wonder.

The library back home is impressive to begin with. For obvious reasons, Sam’s never really encountered another place with such a concentration on the lore of the supernatural, and it had almost been dizzying to start combing through the selection in an attempt to organize things a little bit. Even fifty years out of date, with books so old their pages crumble to the touch and a nonexistent filing system that’s occupied several of Sam’s days off, it’s a marvel in its own right; it’s a testament to the work that their chapter of the Men of Letters had done to gather knowledge about the supernatural.

Now, though, drinking in the sight laid before his eyes, he can’t help but be a little jealous and a lot awed.

The ceiling is high, but it’s not where Sam’s eyes go when there’s so much more to focus on. He spots a balcony-style second floor that wraps around three sides of the room, but the bookshelves that dominate both levels are where his attention is drawn. Sam doesn’t try counting, but there must be dozens; he’s sure his jaw has dropped slightly and he hears Amber laugh in front of him as he looks around, feet taking him forward without really meaning to. His toes sink into a plush carpet that blankets the floor and he’s entirely at a loss for words.

“I thought you’d like it,” Amber tells him, a little smug but mostly sounding pleased. “You want to take a look around?”

Sam’s already moving, though, his eyes following the shape of the massive room as he steps forward. Sound-absorbing baffles hang from the ceiling in creamy colours while the wall panelling and furniture take on darker hues, the whole place warm to the eyes and comfortably muffled. Long tables stretch down the center aisle with padded seats and desk lamps, and a few men and women occupy them, all apparently wrapped up in their work.

“There are some more secluded tables near the back, if you want to sit,” Gabrielle offers when Sam doesn’t say anything. He finally tears his eyes away from the room to look at her, blinking some of the wonder out of his eyes. “You must be tired.”

He is, in truth; he’s far from full strength, and between his minimal diet, abnormal sleep, and shoulder wound, it’s extremely tempting to just slink right back to his room and lay down for a while. He’s here now, though, and despite the fact that they’re starting to draw some attention- Sam doesn’t much appreciate the dirty looks being thrown their way- the last thing he wants to do is bring this little excursion to an early halt because of his own perceived limitations. Better out here and taking in the sights than in his room alone and thinking about the missing half of his soul.

“That’d be good,” he admits, glancing once again towards the rows of bookshelves. “It might, uh, take me some time to look through all this.”

Neither of the girls respond, but Sam hears the unspoken bit that passes between them. He’s going to have plenty of time to do exactly that; it’s not like he’ll be going anywhere in the near future, and it may end up that his days are spent right here, combing through the extensive collection of literature that the Letters have gathered. He shoves that thought to the back of his mind, though, and focuses instead on following Amber’s lead off to the side between a pair of shelves, and then towards the back of the room. She’s deliberately avoiding the most populated part of the library, but Sam stays quiet about that. It’s probably for his own good, anyways. It won’t do them any good to have unnecessary confrontation when Sam’s already been received with so much hostility by the population as a whole.

As promised, they find an empty table, tucked away from the other people inside in a little nook along the far wall. Sam sits down gratefully, letting out a whoosh of air as some energy starts to trickle back into his weary muscles. He hadn’t realized quite how much all the walking had been tiring him out.

Gabrielle sits down, too, but Amber stays on her feet, eyes sweeping back and forth across the rest of the library. It occurs to Sam that maybe she’s been brought along to help keep him safe, and the thought is sort of unsettling for reasons he struggles to identify.

“We’ve got quite a large collection here,” Gabrielle tells him as his eyes return to her. She tucks a bit of hair behind her ear and smiles before turning to gesture around the room. “Like I said before, this is our main library where most works are kept. I’m sure you’ll have time to explore some of the others, as well, if you choose to do so. We’ve got smaller libraries with focuses on spellcraft, demons, and the like. There’s a, ah, very thorough system of organization.” She smiles then, sheepish. “I don’t think I could explain it to you if I tried.”

“You’d have to talk to Autumn for that,” Amber pipes up as Sam glances towards her. “Or Izzy. They both know it pretty well.”

Gabrielle nods her agreement and Sam settles again as Amber crosses her arms across her chest. “There are plenty of people here who’d be happy to talk to you, and to help you with whatever you need. And- Sam?” She reaches for his hands, then, tiny where they grasp his, and Sam’s gentle when he curls his fingers around hers in return. Her voice gets softer and Sam’s hit with a pang of loss all over again as he’s reminded of just where he is. “I know this is bad. I know you don’t want to be here, or to be-” She stops short, and Sam can’t help but wonder where that sentence was going to end. “I know you’re not happy, to say the least, but… you have to believe me when I say that some of us are on your side. We’re going to do what we can to take care of you, okay?”

And there’s nothing Sam can do but nod. He knows they’re trying, and he knows that his own selfish thoughts about wanting to end his own life- about wanting to follow his brother the way he’s always intended to- should be shameful. Regardless of whatever else is going on, he should be grateful that there are still people trying to do him right in this little slice of hell.

It doesn’t make it any easier to forget.

Gabrielle gives him a tiny smile and squeezes his hands again, nodding once. “Thank you,” she says softly. “Let’s just- we can take it one day at a time, okay?”

That much, Sam thinks he can do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (whispers) l e s b i a n s
> 
> Also I'm just. I was so into the idea of some of the BMoL people rooting for Sam and Dean? Like just. You can't tell me that every single one of them thought the Winchesters were the bad guys. There were 100% people in that lot who looked at them at heroes. ;-;


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small peek in on Dean and Mary, and then Sam does some more exploring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :>

The shooting range is usually quiet, these days. It acts more as stress relief than it does training for them after decades of sleeping with guns under their pillows, and there hasn’t been much time for it between everything going on with Amara and Lucifer over the past several months, regardless. It’s strange to be back here, and even stranger in his particular company.

Mary’s apparently gotten over her initial awestricken daze, because she’s started to harden again, eyes sharp and a little wary as she introduces herself to the room. Dean watches from a distance, quiet while he picks up one of his own guns off the rack they’ve got set up. His personal favourite; the ivory-gripped Colt 1911 that he’s carried for decades. He holds it loose and unloaded while Mary finishes her inspection, then offers it up with a box of bullets and a sad half-smile.

“Dad gave it to me,” he tells her quietly and without meeting her eyes. “When I turned seventeen. He, uh- it used to be his. Figured I needed a good piece since I was all grown up, I guess.”

There’s something heavy and heart-wrenching in Mary’s eyes when Dean manages to look up, but he doesn’t say a word and neither does she. She takes the gun from him carefully and spends a moment rubbing her fingertips over the engravings along the barrel before shaking her head sharply and focusing once more.

Watching her move is something surreal. Of course Dean remembers the way she hunted, back in 1973; remembers the way she’d almost put him on the ground at half his size and weight, but trying to reconcile the young hunter he’d met then and the soft mother figure he remembers from his childhood is mixing oil and water. Before his eyes, he watches the two merge; Mary stands up straighter and her stance changes and her shoulders roll back. She’s quick and efficient loading the gun, easy the way she’d sing him to sleep as a child, and then she’s stepping up to her target, no hesitation before she lines up her shot.

Neither of them have bothered with noise-blockers, and neither of them flinch when the sound of the first shot echoes around the room. It’s off-target, hitting the blank space beside the cardboard man’s shoulder, but Mary breathes out slow and readjusts and Dean watches her brace for the gun’s kick this time when she cocks the hammer back and pulls the trigger.

Three shots this time, back-to-back. Each one’s a little closer to the center of the target’s chest and Dean forces himself to look away. The room’s too quiet after the ringing in his ears fades away, and it’s Mary who breaks the silence, her voice too loud and too quiet all at once.

“Your father taught you to shoot?” she asks him, and Dean keeps his eyes on his feet when he nods. Can’t decide if he’s ashamed of the way he was raised or defensive of it in the face of the mother he should’ve had, and doesn’t think he wants to analyze it much further, either.

She laughs a little, and it’s something bitter and something sad and something that Dean never wants to hear from her again. He’s never really gotten a whole lot of what he wants. “Me, too.”

In those few, precious moments when John would dare to talk about Mary- a few drinks and a long day and Dean’s big, sad eyes begging to know a little more about the woman they all lost that night- he used to say that Dean was just like her. That he reminded his dad so, so much of his mother, in every conceivable capacity, and Dean would hold his breath and close his eyes and do everything he could to keep her memory alive.

He hates that even decades later, there’s so much truth to those words.

They’re both quiet for a couple minutes after that, while Mary fires off a few more rounds and then packs everything away just the way it’d been when they arrived. Dean watches without comment, though his heart feels tight in his chest seeing his mother in this light. There’d always been a separation before, when the hunter in Mary existed only in the distant past, but having the two images forced together before his eyes is hard to watch and harder to comprehend.

She doesn’t say anything until Dean turns to lead her out of the room, satisfied in a sad sort of way that she’s every bit the shot she was in her youth, and he thinks that they’ll remain in silence, for the first few steps, right until she speaks up once more, quiet and grim.

“You don’t forget how to shoot,” she repeats, and Dean wonders if there was ever any hope of escaping this life to begin with. Watching his mother dragged back into it, decades post-mortem, to a world she doesn’t know and children she hasn’t met and a war that isn’t hers, tells him that maybe it was all an exercise in futility to begin with.

Dean doesn’t reply, and it’s the end of the conversation for the time being. They’ve got a thousand other things to do, all the same, and Dean tries to remind himself that this reunion needs to be postponed. There’s no point to any of it until they find his brother, and he’s going to need to work out a balance between easing Mary into this world and working to get Sam back.

He can only hope that he’ll be able to manage both. Failure isn’t an acceptable outcome here, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if that’s where they end up.

He thinks once more of his 1911, and decides that- well, maybe he knows exactly where he’ll end up, and he’s always wondered what the barrel of a gun tastes like, anyways. Never too late to find out.

* * *

They spend a little while in the library, and though no one says it out loud, Sam suspects it’s because his companions want to give him time to rest. He’s grateful for the thought, but quickly becomes restless and antsy. He can hear other people moving around, distantly, though the thick carpets muffle much of the room’s sound, and not knowing who they are or where they stand on his right to live is making him anxious.

“Um- Gabrielle,” he says, breaking the silence between the three of them and drawing both womens’ attention. “You mentioned that there were some other libraries, right? Smaller ones?”

She nods quickly, smiles at him. There’s almost a sort of relief in her eyes; Sam wonders how worried she is about him settling in here and decides not to overthink it for the time being. “Yes, that’s right. They’re a little more spread-out, so we’ll have to walk, but…”

“Can we go see them?” he asks. “I’ll be fine, promise. I’m, uh- I’m just curious.”

Curious, sure, but mostly he just doesn’t want to be here anymore. He doesn’t doubt that Amber and Gabrielle will watch out for him, but even the thought of the hostile Letters spread around this room has him on edge. He hasn’t been this jumpy in a place so mundane since his brother went to Purgatory- or, rather, the last time he ended up in a situation like this with his brother dead.

The thought turns his stomach, so he makes himself smile, instead. “We don’t have much spellwork back home. Maybe we could start there?”

Gabrielle’s smile turns a little more excited, then, and she nods, already moving to stand. “Sure, of course,” she replies, moving to help him stand. Sam’s legs shake a little underneath him until he gets his balance, but she doesn’t say a word. “That one isn’t too far.”

Amber hasn’t sat down since she first arrived, and she’s the one who leads the way as they head out. Sam has trouble getting a proper read on her; though it’s obvious she holds a position similar to Toni’s in the way she directs them and holds herself, there are obvious tactical flaws in how she moves and the way she scans the room on the way. Sam’s seen military before, seen veterans and hunters who adopt similar habits, and even the way the two of them meet in the middle in people like his father, but the guard force they seem to have set up here is something other. It’s got him wondering about the sort of training they go through and what kind of regime they maintain, and whether it’s flawed or minimal or both. Not that he would expect the Letters to put much value on physical training.

It makes him wonder even further about why they bother in the first place, but it’s a thought for another time.

It must be getting later in the afternoon, because the hallways are busier when they make it out of the library. Gabrielle stays tight at his side while Amber leads them along the wall, and judging by the way most people seem to be averting their eyes, Sam suspects that she’s giving them some nasty looks if they stare.

“People aren’t very friendly here, are they?” he asks Gabrielle quietly.

She glances up at him and smiles sort of sadly, shaking her head. “It’s a very competitive atmosphere,” she says simply. “Everything is supposed to be about getting better and advancing our knowledge. Being distracted by interpersonal relationships is- well, it’s discouraged.”

“I think the old men just never learned how to make friends,” Amber cuts in with a derivative snort. “They just feel the need to take that pleasure away from the rest of us, too.”

Everything he learns about this chapter just raises more questions for Sam about the Letters as a whole. If this is how things were in Lebanon, too- if their grandfather thought the same way as the men here. “Wouldn’t getting along help them get more done?”

Amber shrugs and glances back at him with a look that suggests it’s been brought up before. “You would think.”

That’s the end of that conversation, and Sam’s left to his own thoughts for the rest of their walk. It’s obvious that the rule- if it can even be called such- isn’t followed by all, but the cold atmosphere that pervades the whole place says that it cuts pretty deep. Growing up working with family, it’s hard for Sam to comprehend spending so much time in such a hostile environment.

“It’s not all bad,” Gabrielle tells him a few minutes later. Maybe his confusion and distress is more obvious than he’d intended. “We still make friends here. It’s just- a matter of subtlety, is all.”

She glances back towards Amber as she says it, and Sam can’t help a bit of a smile. At least some people see fit to get around the stricter rules.

While the main library had dominated its space, Sam doesn’t realize they’ve reached their current destination until Amber stops in front of him and announces it. “Here. Shouldn’t be too busy, anyways.”

The door is smaller and nondescript, blending in with the dozens of others they’ve passed on their way here. It isn’t even labelled beyond a generic number stamped at eye-level- two-hundred seventeen- and Sam can only nod, admittedly surprised. Smaller, indeed.

Amber opens the door for them and Sam follows her inside, breathing in the scent of old books that sits heavy in the room. It’s almost cozy; the room isn’t much bigger than the kitchen back home with a handful of shelves stuffed to the brim with old texts and loose papers. He spots a couple tables tucked away in the back of room, and one girl who occupies them, hair tied back from her face in a messy ponytail and surrounded by stacks of books.

It’s small and quiet, and Sam decides right away that he likes it a lot.

“Here we are,” Gabrielle tells him, softer than she’d been speaking outside. There’s an atmosphere to the room that refuses to be shattered by volume, and Sam figures he’s not the only one who feels it right then. “This is where most of the spellcraft is kept. I know that witches aren’t… favoured by hunters, exactly, and some of this magic is forbidden to us altogether due to its more volatile nature, but some of it can be helpful, at times, if used appropriately.”

She sounds like she’s trying to placate him, and Sam can’t help but feel a little guilty. He wonders exactly how much they hear about him and Dean and what they do over on this side of the pond. “Yeah. We- uh. I’ve met a few good witches. White witches, who just- they’re good. And hey, any hunter worth their salt is lying if they say they haven’t tapped into some magic before on a tough case.” He stumbles on the plural because he’s too used to referring to himself as half of a unit, but he manages a tiny smile right at the end and gets one in return, too, so he figures he did okay.

“It can be fun, right?” She nods happily and then glances towards where Amber’s stepped away from them, towards the girl at the table, and they both watch as she comes right up behind the chair with no apparent regard for personal space and plants her hands on the younger girl’s shoulders, leaning right over her to peek at what she’s doing.

“Still in here, huh, kid?” Amber says thoughtfully as the girl jumps, then glances up towards her, making a face. “What is it now?”

A moment passes as Sam and Gabrielle move closer and the girl settles again, turning back to her books. “Still the flowers. They’re not cooperating yet.”

“Well, how about you take a break for a second and meet our guest?” Amber glances towards Sam, then, giving him a wink. “Sam, this is Autumn, my wannabe-witch of a little sister. Autumn, this is Sam Winchester. You know all the rest.”

Autumn whips around in her chair, suddenly, eyes wide, and Sam takes a moment to note the family resemblance. Standing together like they are, it’s impossible to miss the similar face shapes, the freckles they both have, and the matching hair colour. She sounds startled when she speaks, like she’s just been woken from a particularly immersive dream. “Sam Winchester?”

Sam offers her a tentative smile, and after half a beat, his hand to shake. A couple courtesies he skipped with the other girls, so there’s no harm in making up for it now. “Yeah. Hi, Autumn.”

It’s more than a little uncomfortable as she just stares for a few seconds like a deer caught in the headlights, but then the moment ends when Amber tugs gently at the end of her ponytail. “Hey, c’mon. He’s not a rockstar.”

Autumn shakes her head sharply and then she’s smiling, hopping up out of her seat and taking Sam’s hand in hers, tiny and delicate. “Sorry, it’s just- I’ve heard a lot about you,” she confesses, and Sam gets a distinct feeling of déjà vu. He’s not used to feeling like a celebrity, and between the scattered encounters like this one and the general cold shoulder he’s been getting from everyone else, he’s at a bit of a loss for how to act. “You and your brother- you’ve done so much, and you’re so…” She trails off, then, looking down at where their hands are still linked. “I’m sorry, that’s… he… you’re probably not-”

“Hey.” Sam stops her short because he’s had enough condolences already and he’s not sure how many more he can take. Instead he squeezes her hand, just gentle, smiling a little when she looks back up towards him. “It’s okay. It’s nice to meet you.”

For a long moment, their eyes meet in silence, and then she cracks a smile, too, tiny and sad. It reflects the way Sam’s chest is all twisted up inside and he can’t decide whether it makes things better or worse. “So, um- you’re on a tour?”

“He wanted to see the libraries.” Gabrielle comes to the rescue as they finally let go of their handshake, and Sam glances towards her as she continues. “Or at least this one. We probably shouldn’t stay out too long, though. You need to rest.”

The last comment is directed at Sam with a firm wag of her finger, and his smile turns a little more genuine. “I’m okay for now. Might just… sit.”

He grabs himself a chair near where Autumn’s set herself up as she starts talking again, worry and excitement tripping over each other in her voice. “Oh, I’d forgotten- how bad did they hurt you? It sounded like there was a struggle. I’m surprised that Toni managed to bring you in at all, really, but… here you are.”

The three of them talk for a moment about his injury as Sam gets settled, and he takes the time to catch his breath and look around. The lighting in this room is warmer, and it’s infinitely easier to relax without the eyes of other, more hostile Letters on him. It’s just the four of them in this tiny library, and Sam thinks that, without a doubt, he’d be happy to spend his time here, however much of that might be left. He still doesn’t really know what the Letters plan to do with him, should he continue to resist their attempts at recruitment, but it’s a concern for another time. He’s not got the energy to get all worked up about it now.

“-it’s not working quite yet,” Autumn’s saying when he tunes back into the conversation. She sounds frustrated, and Sam glances between her and the workstation she’s got set up. He hadn’t noticed it on the way in, hidden amidst the stacks of books as it is, but there’s a potted sunflower just behind the battered old notebook that’s been left open on the table, giving still more warmth to the room with its vibrant colour. Sam’s left staring, all caught up in how out of place it seems among the otherwise dull palette of the library. “But I’m still working on it.”

Sam looks up, finally, as his curiosity overtakes him and he asks without even really thinking about it. “Working on what?”

Three sets of eyes settle on him, and Autumn’s the one who speaks, sounding a little surprised and a little pleased. “I’m trying to make that flower bloom at night. Just at night. Because- well, there are flowers that do that already, but not sunflowers, and- wouldn’t that be a little ironic?” She shrugs, smiling at him. “It’s just a silly project I’ve been working on. Need to fill the time somehow, don’t I?”

“And you’re doing it with… magic?” Sam asks. It’s hardly the sort of witchcraft he’s used to. “Really?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” More nodding, and Autumn steps towards her things again, one hand coming up to stroke one careful fingertip over the flower’s petals. “Just playing around, mostly, but it’ll get me somewhere eventually.”

Sam doesn’t have a damn clue of what to make of this. Creative, pacifistic witchcraft is the last thing he’d have expected to find here, but he can’t deny his own fascination with the subject. “You really think it can be done?”

“Yeah, I do.” Autumn turns to smile at him, fingertips trailing down the delicate stem of the flower before leaving it alone. “It’s just the matter of getting the enchantment just right. Though I suppose it isn’t of much use down here. There’s not much telling between day and night besides when the clocks go off…”

“But still, that’s- that’s amazing,” Sam insists, all caught up in his own excitement. He’s reminded of his own interest in magic and witchcraft- they tend to steer clear of it, for obvious reasons, but there’s always been a certain thrill to getting to use the occasional tracking or summoning spell. The possibilities always seemed limitless to him, beyond what dark witches did out of malice, and this only proves it. “You’re altering its entire physiology, and that’s- it’s something we’re only just beginning to know how to do even with science. Figuring that out all on your own…” He shakes his head, awed. “That’s incredible.”

Autumn seems to be at a loss for words, but Amber slings an arm around her middle and gives her a squeeze. “Yeah, she’s a real smart cookie,” she agrees, with the sort of older-sibling fondness that Sam knows so intimately. “Keep telling her she’s going to run this place one day. Once the old men are out of the picture, anyways.”

Autumn’s blushing, now, but she’s smiling, too, and Sam’s brief melancholy fades away for the time being. “It’s just a hobby, but- it’s fun. I like playing around with it.”

“Good.” Sam smiles at her, just soft. “It’s good to have something you’re passionate about.”

It’s an odd feeling, being shifted into this position- the position of _elder_ , of _mature_ or _experienced_ or something thereabouts. He’s used to having respect in the hunting community, of course, but this is a new feeling entirely- one of being almost deified; he’s used to taking second seat to his brother with these things, but the way Autumn looks at him now-

Well, he’s not quite sure what to make of it.

“Thank you,” she says sincerely, then hesitates a moment as she glances towards her sister and Gabrielle. “Are you staying long? I was just going to be tinkering with this for the rest of the day. Things have been slow since-” She stops herself short and gives Sam a guilty glance. “There’s not much going on right now.”

“All quiet on the western front.” Amber shakes her head with a wry smile. “We’re just kind of playing this by ear and showing him around. We won’t be able to cover it all today, but we’re hitting some of the basics, anyways, so I guess it’s up to Sam.”

Sam just offers half of a shrug when they look back towards him, trying to hide his wince when it puts too much of a strain on his injured shoulder. “I, uh- I’m okay. If you want to keep walking around, I mean.”

A few beats of silence, and then Gabrielle speaks up again. “We shouldn’t stay out much longer. I was serious when I said you needed your rest. Doctor’s orders.”

That’s got him smiling a bit, and he offers a tired salute. “Sure. Should we just head back, then?”

“Have you showed him the greenhouse?” Autumn interrupts, suddenly sounding excited again. “You have to show him the greenhouse before he goes back to his room.”

Sam blinks, not sure if he’d heard correctly. “Greenhouse?”

Gabrielle pauses and makes a thoughtful sound at that. “It’s not too far. We could bring him there and then back to his room for some sleep. It wouldn’t take too long.”

Amber’s already nodding, glancing at her sister with a grin before looking back at Sam. “You’ve got to see it. It’s brilliant. Ready to go?”

Sam nods because he doesn’t know how else to react, and he lets Gabrielle help him back to his feet, turning to Autumn just before they leave. “You’re staying here?”

She nods, offering him an apologetic smile and tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Yeah. I’ve got to figure this out or it’ll drive me mad. I’ll try to come by and see you later, though, if that’s okay?”

“Sure.” Sam smiles, already looking forward to it. “You’ll need to show me when you’re done with that flower, yeah? I’m not sure I’ll believe it until I see it.”

Her smile grows and she nods, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Then I’ll just have to make a believer out of you, Sam Winchester.”

She’s right back to work as Gabrielle and Amber guide Sam back towards the door, and he’s left smiling, endeared all over again by her enthusiasm. He hasn’t been here long, but meeting people who are so far removed from the ones who brought him in to begin with- Toni and Gerald and the whole lot- is a soothing balm on his heart. It’s comforting to know that they aren’t all so cruel.

They walk in an easy silence for a minute or two before Sam speaks up, still confused by their destination. “So… greenhouse?”

“Greenhouse,” Gabrielle confirms, at his side once more as Amber leads them down the hall. Other people pass, but they steer clear like there’s an invisible barrier around the three of them. Disheartening, but better than confrontation, he thinks. “It’s one of the biggest rooms here. I suppose, technically, calling it a greenhouse is inaccurate, since it’s… a little non-traditional.”

It’s raising more questions than answers, so Sam just goes ahead and keeps asking. “Non-traditional how? Does it get sunlight?”

“Not exactly.” Gabrielle smiles at him, excited like she’s ready to show him something she’s proud of, and he won’t be entirely surprised if that’s the case. “Autumn just showed you a little bit of the magic we use here, but- well, we’re pretty generous with it when it comes to sustaining ourselves. We’re pretty private, and our contact with the outside world is minimal, so in order to keep ourselves healthy and fed-”

“And scurvy-free,” Amber adds cheerfully, glancing back over her shoulder. “That one used to be a bitch around here.”

Gabrielle rolls her eyes, even as a fond smile plays at her lips. “Yes, and scurvy-free. We’ve got our greenhouse.”

Sam opens his mouth to ask more questions, but it closes again of its own accord when he realizes that they’ve arrived. The door is impossible to miss; it’s immaculate in a way that none of the others have been, with intricate sigils carved around the entirety of its arch. The door itself is glass, and beyond it, Sam can just make out the colour green. Everything else is indistinct, but it’s enough to have him intrigued.

“The greenhouse,” Gabrielle repeats as Amber opens up the door with the utmost care. “It’s a little warm and- um, damp. Just a heads-up.”

Sam just nods, already following Amber inside like he’s in a trance. The first thing he notices is the way the ceiling is all but lost among foliage; it’s too high for him to clearly make out, and he stops trying when his eyes begin to protest. Looking around on his own level is no less dazzling, though- he doesn’t even really know where to begin.

“It’s entirely self-sufficient,” Gabrielle tells him, a hand at his elbow as she leads him farther inside. “The sprinkler systems draw from wells very deep underground, and require almost no maintenance. In theory, it could run entirely on its own for decades, though we’ve yet to encounter a situation that would push it to that sort of requirement.”

There’s grass underfoot and a stone path towards which he’s being steered. It’s less like a greenhouse and more like an entire outdoor orchard or something of similar scale. Trees of a dozen sizes and species line the main path, many bearing fruit and others blooming with flowers. Further down, he spots what appear to be rows of crops; the sheer size of the place is mind-blowing, and with every step he takes farther inside, he’s more and more convinced that they must’ve left the entire Men of Letters stronghold behind.

“This is… we’re…”

Sam doesn’t know what to say, entirely at a loss for words. In his silence, Gabrielle speaks up again, continuing with her little tour. “There’s plenty of food being grown, but we use it for the spellwork, too. Rare ingredients and the like are much easier to find when you can grow them fresh.”

“How?” Sam manages a moment later. It’s the only question he can properly articulate for the time being. “What’s- you mentioned sprinklers, but…”

“It’s… rather complicated.” Gabrielle smiles apologetically. “There’s a whole network of spells and sigils that make this place what it is. It’s a very delicate environment, really, but perfectly crafted for its purpose.”

“We’re not really allowed to mess with it,” Amber adds over her shoulder. “There are a few of us around here who know enough about the whole system that they can tweak it and add things and the like, but us mortals would probably just ruin it if we tried.”

The air is moist, as promised, and there’s some sort of light coming from above, filtered down through the trees overhead. Sam’s got no explanation for most of what he’s experiencing, so instead of reaching for it, he breathes in deep and focuses on the sweet fragrances that surround him. If he looks past the sheer impossibility of this place, it’s… relaxing. It’s quiet, warm, and generally pleasant. It isn’t hard to pretend he’s really outside, either, instead of being a pseudo-prisoner in an underground encampment run by a centuries-old secret society.

“Anyways, this is it.” Gabrielle turns to smile at him once more. “It’s a nice place to take a walk, if you have the energy for it. Just be sure not to touch anything too delicate and you’ll be just fine.”

Sam nods, eyes still drifting as he tries to take in everything before him. “Yeah. Wouldn’t want to piss anyone off more than I already do.”

“You’re pissing off all sorts of people just by being alive,” Amber agrees with a laugh. “It’s almost impressive.”

“At least someone’s enjoying it.” Sam smiles too, though, rubbing at the back of his neck as he cranes it back again to look up. “Guess there’s not a whole lot I can do to fix that.”

They all fall quiet for a moment, and it’s a contented silence. An odd moment of calm amidst the chaos and fear that compose most of Sam’s life now. When it breaks, it’s Gabrielle speaking, soft at his side, and Sam tilts his head to listen. “We should head back now. We’ll get you something to eat, if you’d like, but you really should rest. You’re in no shape to be spending too much time on your feet.”

Sam doesn’t have it in him to protest, and if he’s entirely honest with himself, he’s edging towards exhaustion, anyways. He nods, and the three of them turn back towards the door while he takes his last look at this little slice of the outside world. He makes note of the path and look of the hallway when they exit and promises himself that he’ll return soon.

The walk back to his room doesn’t feel nearly as long as the way out had, and Sam’s grateful to recognize his own door, even if it’s something of a prison cell to him. He breathes out slow once he steps inside, Gabrielle and Amber both lingering behind him, and doesn’t hesitate to move towards his bed. He sinks down onto the mattress with a grateful sigh, and just opens his eyes to see Gabrielle coming close again, stopping by his knees where they hang off the edge.

“I’ll bring you some food in a little while,” she tells him, voice already soft like she’s soothing him to sleep. “For now, just try to rest, okay? Heal up for me.”

Sam smiles at her and accepts the hug that comes his way. Over Gabrielle’s shoulder, Amber gives him a little salute, and Sam nods in return before he closes his eyes. Gabrielle pulls away, and then the both of them are stepping out, the gentle closing of his door signalling that he is, once again, alone.

Sam takes a deep breath and opens his eyes once more. Just one thing to do before he can let himself sleep.

His hand’s a little steadier on the pen this time, and he bites his lip as he tries to figure out what, exactly, he needs to say.

_Dean._

_I think you’d like it here. Not here the way I’m here- not like a prisoner. You were so enthusiastic about our bunker, though, and figuring out all the little secrets it had, and this place… it’s even more. I can’t imagine how excited you’d be to explore every single endless hallway._

_I guess it’s up to me to be excited for you, now. I don’t know how well I’ll be able to do that._

_They’ve got a greenhouse here, Dean. You could get your tomatoes fresh and everything._

_I have to believe that you’ll come back if I try hard enough. If I give you enough of a reason. I think that’s the only thing keeping me going right now. So… so there’s a greenhouse, Dean. A magic fucking greenhouse._

_I know you won’t believe me until you see it, so what do you say you come see it for yourself?_

_I’m waiting._

_-your little brother_

Sam’s always been a believer. In God, in magic, in the good in people. It’s natural as anything that he’ll keep on believing in his big brother, too, no matter how futile.

Faith has never been about getting what he wants, but it’s not like he’s got anything left to lose putting all his eggs in that particular basket. Not a damn thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anddd we've reached the end of what I've got written so far. :> no telling how long it'll be until the next bit, so. Sorry in advance for that ;-;


End file.
